Staffing legislation in NJ
One of the tenets of healthcare is the provision of adequate healthcare for all patients and the health care needs to be the safest possible that the medics and the facilities can offer. This has been a concern for many institutions yet few states like California have actively enacted the legislations that have to do with staffing legislations. It is indicated that in the past decade, approximately 15 state and the federal government have proposed or successfully enacted the regulations and legislations that address nurse staffing in the acute care hospitals (Reiter K.L. et.al., 2012). This indicates that there is the need to have such legislations put in full operational force in the various health care facilities and cover states, New Jersey not an exemption in this. The patients herein deserve to have adequate care bearing that it is one of the states with the highest number of ageing population that is prone to the effects of the acute health problems mainly associated with the old age.
The staffing legislations take varied forms, the most common that have been discussed across many states being the nurse-to-patient ratio. This is deemed as the most important tenet of nursing since it has outstanding benefits to the patients and the society at large. There needs to be legislations mandating minimum nurse staffing ratios since this will directly impact positively on the working conditions for the nurses that are in a facility, it will also improve the safety of the nurses and also help increase the quality of the care that the patients will be receiving. With the increased number of nurses in the facility, there will be lesser chances of nurses suffering burnouts as a consequence of prolonged shifts or even overtime...
The decreased burnouts will hence mean the nurses will be lesser exposed to occupational injuries that may come as a consequence of fatigue. These come in the form of needle pricks, falls and other forms of physical injuries that nurses may be subjected to due to fatigue. The patients will also receive the best possible treatment since the chances of wrong medication, negligent procedures, oversights, inaccurate records and such like issues that affect patients will be minimized if the nurses work within the required time span and are relieved of their shifts by the subsequent lot.
There are arguments that such a legislation could be expensive to implement, however, it is worth noting that proper staffing of hospitals with adequate nurses will lead to fewer complications being brought into the hospital that have to be catered for at the expense of the hospital, there will be shorter patient stays in the hospitals hence reduction in operational costs, there will be fewer readmissions hence better for patients and cheaper for the hospital, there will also be lesser need for temporary and travelling nurses hence cheaper for the hospital to use in house nurses only and this legislation will also lead to lowering of the nursing staff turnover. This can only be possible in a condition where there are sufficient numbers of nurses employed in a given facility to help take good care of the patients. This legislation is long overdue for New Jersey health care facilities.
On the opposing perspective, there are the views that find the minimum nurse conditions as to be detrimental to the operations of the health care facilities. As indicated by Reiter K.L. et.al., (2012), there are the arguments that the controversies…
