Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
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...…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.
Nursing Shortage Issues Surrounding the Nursing Shortage In the early 2000s, national strategies to improve the nursing workforce profile were largely focused on increasing the number of nurses at the bedside through the use of sign-on bonuses and travel nurses. While these strategies tended to provide local short-term solutions, they did little to address long-term issues affecting the nursing shortage. With nursing education programs challenged to increase student enrollment, many colleges were
Nursing shortages and high nurse turnover are very common issues faced in the health care industry. This instability of workforce in the health care industry in many countries is raising questions about performance of the nurses and quality of the patient care. Gray & Phillips (1996) pointed out that nursing turnover has a negative impact on the organization's ability to meet the needs of the patients and provide them quality care.
Nursing Shortage Review On Nurses Shortage The supply of professional nurses relative to the increase in demand for their services has been on a general decline over the years. As a career choice, nursing has been facing perennial shortage of professionals. Most healthcare organizations will affirm that their daunting tasks were recruiting fresh nurses and retaining the ones already in practice. The 2008 projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that
Nursing Burnout: A Crisis in Healthcare The phenomenon of nursing burnout has become a significant concern within the healthcare industry. Defined as a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion caused by prolonged and excessive stress, burnout amongst nurses is not only detrimental to their health but also impacts patient care and the efficiency of healthcare systems worldwide (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). As frontline workers in patient care, nurses are
Education Plan for Nurse Burnout at North Mountain Medical The current issue at North Mountain Medical is nursing burnout, which is caused by various factors including inadequate staffing, increased workload, long working hours, poor working environment, and inadequate time to complete a task effectively. The proposed change project to address this issue is an educational plan that targets nursing burnout, particularly workplace stress management. In this regard, the practicum education project
Peer-Reviewed Nursing Articles The study by Van Oostveen, Mathijssen and Vermeulen (2015) is characterized as qualitative because its primary objective was to obtain more “in-depth insight” into the experiences and perceptions of nurses regarding nurse overwork. This is a regular aspect of qualitative studies: they do not seek to test a hypothesis or identify a correlation among variables but rather to better understand a phenomenon or gain insight into the subjective