Legislative Issue Affecting Nurse Practitioners in New York

Nurse to Patient Ratios Fixed to Reduce Nurse Burnout and Turnover
Dear Assemblywoman Solages,
Senate Bill S1032 addresses the nurse-to-patient ration in New York by mandating that a “safe staffing for quality care” standard be defined and implemented for nurse practitioners (NPs) in the state. Specifically, the legislation if passed would “require acute care facilities and nursing homes to implement certain direct-care nurse to patient ratios in all nursing units; sets minimum staffing requirements; requires every such facility to submit a documented staffing plan to the department on an annual basis and upon application for an operating certificate” (Senate Bill S1032, 2020). This is an important bill because it ensures both that patients are adequately provided for and that nurses are not overworked or pushed towards burnout. Considering how high the turnover rate is in the nursing field, it is about time that our legislators address the issue of patient safety and quality care by regulating the nurse-to-patient ratio. For too long nurses have been worked to the bone due to nursing shortages that cause NPs to put in long hours.
Nurses need to be in optimal health in order to provide adequate care to patients. If there are too few nurses on call, they will be pushed to the limit of their endurance and beyond just to meet the minimum needs of the patients demanding their attention. It is not a tenable situation. Nurses must have sufficient support or they will risk depletion of the vital resources and energy that enable them to provide patients with care, compassion and treatment. This bill should be supported and made into law for that reason. It should also be supported because it has been shown the nurse-to-patient ratios are essential for quality care (McHugh, Aiken, Windsor, Douglas & Yates, 2020).
Nurse burnout and nurse turnover is a problem worldwide. It is a problem directly related to nurse overwork. Too much is currently put on the plates of nurses: they cannot handle the workload. The greater the nurse-to-patient ratio, the more likely nurses are to experience burnout in short order; the more likely they are to experience job dissatisfaction; the more likely they to have an intention to leave the field completely and make worse an already bad situation (Shin, Park & Bae, 2018).
However, patient safety is also the issue. As Livanos (2018) points out, patient safety is directly related to nurse-to-patient ratios. This means that the better the nurse to patient ratio the more likely patients are to receive adequate and safe, quality care. When nurses are tasked with attending to more patients than they can confidently handle, nursing errors are more likely to crop up. This is a problem because nursing errors are one of the highest causes of health-related issues among patients. In other words, nurses who should be providing quality care for patients end up actually causing them harm because of the fact that the health care facility is understaffed and the nurses, as a result, are overworked. It is not an enviable condition.
Bill S1032 addresses the issue and provides regulation that will change the way the field of nursing is conducted. NPs will no longer be worked incessantly until they quit the industry altogether. Instead, they will be valued and appreciated and supported. Facilities will be sufficiently staffed and patients adequately cared for. Nurses will enjoy a higher job satisfaction level. Everyone wins if this bill gets passed and signed into law. Therefore, I ask for your support.
Sincerely,
References
Livanos, N. (2018). A broadening coalition: Patient safety enters the Nurse-to-Patient ratio debate. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 9(1), 68-70.
McHugh, M. D., Aiken, L. H., Windsor, C., Douglas, C., & Yates, P. (2020). Case for hospital nurse-to-patient ratio legislation in Queensland, Australia, hospitals: an observational study. BMJ open, 10(9), e036264.
Senate Bill S1032. (2020). Retrieved from https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s1032
Shin, S., Park, J. H., & Bae, S. H. (2018). Nurse staffing and nurse outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Nursing Outlook, 66(3), 273-282.