Our group identified nurse staffing to be a current issue in the healthcare field. A bill was recently reintroduced in congress addressing many of the issues our group wishes to look into.
The RN Safe Staffing Act (S. 58/ H.R. 876) focuses on many things, including “acuity of patients, level of experience of nursing staff, layout of the unit, and level of ancillary support.” All of these factors are essential to establishing a “right” nurse-patient ratio. This bill was sponsored by ANA and introduced to congress by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Reps. Lois Capps (D-CA) and Steven LaTourette (R-OH).
The RN Safe Staffing Act was originally introduced in 2003-2004 in order for hospitals to develop their own nurse staffing policies keeping in mind each unit’s unique characteristics. The bill was further refined for the upcoming session with several changes. These changes include holding Medicare-participating hospitals accountable for developing these unit-by-unit staffing policies and that the developing committees would be composed of at least 55% direct care nurses. Specific components of this bill were composed to ensure the staffing plans “are based upon patient numbers and the severity of the patients' health needs (acuity), take into account the level of education, training and experience of the RNs, take into account the availability of support staff, reflect staffing levels recommended by specialty nursing organizations, consider the physical layout of the unit and available technology, do not require RNs to work in units where they are not trained or experienced” (The RN Safe Staffing Act (S. 58/ H.R. 876)).
We know that safe staffing for nurses is an important issue to address because studies have shown that the consequences of not having adequate staffing are unsafe with multiple detrimental outcomes. One component of this is poor patient outcome. Common problems for patients related to ineffective nurse staffing include but are not limited to UTIs, upper GI bleeds, longer hospital stays, shock, failure to rescue, and mortality within 30 days of admissions. Studies have shown that insufficient nurse staffing is linked to poor patient outcomes and that adding RNs to unit staffing has been shown to eliminate almost 1/5 of hospital deaths. The satisfaction of nurses is also greatly affected by staffing issues. A poll of over ten thousand nurses conducted by the ANA in 2007 revealed that 73% of nurses don’t believe that staffing on their unit or shift is sufficient and 59.8% of the respondents knew of someone who left direct care nursing due to concerns about safe staffing. Poor staffing can cause nurse burn out, job dissatisfaction and turnover and poor patient outcome.
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