05.11.2004

Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Nurses rally for safe levels of staffing
Shaun Sutner
T&G STAFF
ssutner@telegram.com


BOSTON—Hundreds of nurses rallied at the Statehouse yesterday for legislation that would require hospitals to hire more nurses and maintain mandatory staffing levels considered safe for patients.

Clad in powder blue T-shirts, the nurses, members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association union, said patients are suffering because they are overworked and forced to care for too many people at a time.

"We need this just to save lives," said Loretta Steele, a veteran nurse at St. Vincent Hospital at Worcester Medical Center who was at the event. "Patients deserve better. Hospitals can afford it with their profits."

The bill's prospects, however, appear dim this year because of opposition from the hospital industry and key legislative leaders at a time when many hospitals are struggling financially.

The measure was released from the Legislature's Health Care Committee last year, but it has languished since then, and California remains the only state that has such a "safe staffing" law.

Now, legislative leaders are promoting a commission to study the fiscal impact of the bill after a budget amendment proposed by Rep. Jennifer M. Callahan, D-Sutton, to implement the safe staffing bill failed last month.

Meanwhile, Sen. Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, is pushing a competing measure that would leave staffing authority in hospital administrators' hands but make hospitals' staffing plans public and measure how hospitals meet nursing standards.

Mr. Moore, co-chairman of the Health Care Committee, asserted that it would cost hospitals $500 million to comply with the law the nurses want, and that it would not work anyway because of a severe shortage of nurses.

"They don't have the money, and the state certainly isn't in a position to make up the difference, and even if we did, we don't have enough nurses to fill the positions," he said. "The problem with it is that it increases the demand for nurses without doing anything about the supply."

But nurses and their supporters are undeterred. They are continuing to push for the bill to be released for debate before the two-year legislative session ends July 31.

After the 10:30 a.m. rally in the Statehouse's Nurses Hall, the 1,000 or so nurses who traveled here from all over the state dispersed to lobby legislators in their offices. Nurses and other health care workers from Worcester who traveled by bus to the event were among them.

Margaret Thornton, a nursing instructor at Becker College in Worcester, said she feels terrible about sending students off into working situations in which they will be hard-pressed to do a good job.

"I feel like such a hypocrite. They're just surviving out there. What am I letting my students in for?" she said.

The staffing law calls for one nurse for every four patients in medical and surgical units.

In emergency departments, the measure would mandate a 1-to-1 to a 1-to-3 ratio depending on the severity of patient conditions. Ratios would be 1-to-1 in labor and 1-to-2 for intensive care. Other ratios would range from 1-to-1 to 1-to-5.