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Home > Industry
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 No Minimum Patient Safety Standard
Included
The Massachusetts Hospital Association
has filed its own nurse staffing
legislation being sponsored by Senator
Richard Moore. The "feel good" bill
misses the mark on patient safety and
maintains the dangers of the status quo.
The MHA
bill is written by hospital administrators for hospital
administrators and fails to provide any
minimum standards that will protect
hospital patients from the current
dangerous practice of understaffing of
registered nurses. It gives the allusion
of accountability while providing
absolutely no accountability. Nearly
every requirement called for in this bill
is already called for under the industry’s
accreditation process, a process that
has proved totally ineffective in
guaranteeing patients safe care.
Problems
with the bill include:
- Merely
allows the hospital industry to file a report about its staffing "plan",
with no requirement that they meet any minimum standard of
safety.
- Has
the board of directors of the hospital approve the staffing "plan," allowing
those responsible for the current practice of understaffing
of registered nurses to continue to
approve similar staffing plans.
- Fails
to address the root cause of the nursing crisis: nurses burned
out with high patient loads leaving
the bedside. This is the number one
reason why RNs continue to leave
the bedside. Years of experience
with recruitment incentives has
proven that they just don't work; the
crisis is with retention.
- Calls
for yet another commission to study this issue. When the
legislature conducted such a
study in 2001 it recommended the
establishment of minimum RN-topatient
ratios.
Instead
of addressing this crisis and protecting patients with a minimum
standard, this "feel good" measure
protects an industry that has endorsed
the practice of understaffing of
registered nurses.
However,
the bill does include important faculty and recruitment initiatives
that
should be acted upon immediately:
Increase
Nursing School Faculty
Nursing school enrollments have and
continue to have waiting lists. We must to meet the demand for
nurses to care for an aging population in the coming
decade. Continue
Strong Supply of RNs
Massachusetts is fortunate to have more
RNs per capita than any state in nation.
While we don’t have a nursing shortage,
we do have a shortage of nurses willing
to work in the acute care hospital setting
under current staffing levels. While
continuing to work to increase the
long-term supply of RNs is important,
addressing the immediate exodus of RNs
from the bedside is more critical.
Tell
your legislators a minimum patient safety standard is common
sense.
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