What I wanted to talk about today is the S.1113, which is nurse staffing standards for hospital patient safety and quality care act of 2023. A big problem in our hospital system in the United States is not having safe staffing in our hospitals, which then in turn leads to issues with the quality and the safety of patient care. An extraordinary factor that affected safe staffing ratios in our hospitals is the COVID 19 pandemic. The pandemic brought out a side of people, patients, and workers likewise, that had never been seen before. The pandemic caused a lot of workplaces to suffer staff burn out, and unfortunately has even cost some of the lives of our healthcare workers. Along with the pandemic, nurses continue to have troubles with unsafe working conditions, overloaded patient assignments with an unsafe number of patients to care for, and overwhelming workloads.
To try to help alleviate this, lawmakers brought to attention and proposed S.1113- The Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act of 2023. This bill was proposed by Senator Sherrod Brown. This is a bill aimed at establishing the maximum numbers of nurse-patient ratios in hospitals all around the nation.
The goal of this bill that was proposed is to enhance patient outcomes, protect the well-being of nursing professionals by mandating safe staffing. The bill has sparked debate across the healthcare community, with supporters emphasizing its potential to enhance care quality and opponents warning of its financial and logistical burdens. Nurse staffing has been an issue for decades. Safe staffing ratios are a necessity, not a want or a need in healthcare, but they treat them like it’s not a big deal and not something that is important or critical. Staffing ratios have a lot to do with things that happen in healthcare, and they are as follows. Staffing ratios have to do with the number of patients assigned to a nurse to care for during their shift. Whenever there isn’t safe staffing, it can be detrimental to someone’s life. Non safe staffing leads to deaths, medical errors, burnout of the job, and patient neglect. This paper will elaborate a little on why safe staffing is so important and necessary.
When a nurse has too many patients, the quality of the care they provide dwindles drastically. You can just tell by a nurse’s attitude and their body language if they are overwhelmed or not. Proper and safe staffing allows nurses to give medications on time, monitor the patient’s vital signs more closely and efficiently, and be more prompt and able to respond to complications or problems that can arise. Reducing errors improves a patient’s recovery time and reduces patient errors. There have been multiple studies done that have shown and demonstrated that safe staffing ratios correlate to better patient outcomes.
Other than having a positive effect on patient care, having safe staffing also allows nurses to be significantly more satisfied in their jobs and their careers, and also their mental health. Being a nurse is not only a mentally taxing job, but also it is a physical one. Nursing is one of the toughest professions out there. When a nurse is overworked and overwhelmed, there is not only job dissatisfaction, but there is also a risk for physical injury because they are trying to make sure everyone gets taken care of, no matter the risk to them or their life/body. If a nurse has safe and proper staffing, the chances of that nurse staying at the job they have and that companies’ retention rates being better, than if there is constant turnover of nurses due to unsafe staffing ratios and nurse burnout.
Beyond patient care, staffing ratios significantly affect nurse satisfaction and mental health. Overworked nurses are at higher risk for burnout, job dissatisfaction, and even physical injury. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), high workload and poor staffing are among the leading causes of turnover in the nursing profession. Burnout can lead to absenteeism, lower productivity, and a negative work environment, all of which further strain the healthcare system. Safe staffing is thus not only a patient safety issue but also a workforce sustainability concern.
There are not many states in the United States that have taken steps to put in effect nurse to patient ratios, but California has a law that mandates minimum staffing levels in hospitals. This went into effect for California in 2004 and this was the first in the nation.
People can try to come back with an argument and say that it’s not feasible to have safe nurse to patient ratios because of the price of having to hire all of the nurses, but I don’t think that’s true. The amount of money it would take to hire the correct amount of nurses is pennies on the dollar to what lawsuits and such are for the hospital when things happen and go wrong with patients.
To conclude this paper, staffing ratios that are safe are essential to have quality and effective patient care, having proper nurse wellbeing, and a healthcare system that works and is effective. As the medical community continues to grow and nurses are a career that are ever changing and always needed, safe staffing should remain at the very top of the concern for healthcare.
If the Safe Staffing act is not passed, then I guess some sort of counter argument is winning the argument. In fact, the 118th Congress could not get this passed House Resolution 2530 never got out of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, and in the Senate after it was introduced in March of 2023 it never got through the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The Democrats controlled the Senate in 2023, and the Republicans controlled the House, so neither party seems to have made safe staffing a priority.
Perhaps the people in Congress do not want to establish national standards for staffing ratios, and they want to allow states to each set their own staffing ratios, or they think specific hospitals and clinics and other medical care facilities can set their own staffing ratios without interference from the Federal Government. Who would enforce the staffing ratios?
Your description of this policy makes it seem like an obviously good bill, and it is not easy to understand why the bill went nowhere in the 118th Congress. I wonder if it will be re-introduced in the 119th and whether Congress could pass it now, since Sherrod Brown's party is in control of both bodies of Congress and the White House, perhaps the bill could pass. However, the 119th Congress has been in session for months now, and as far as I know, they haven't passed a single significant piece of legislation for Trump to sign. It seems this should be a bipartisan bill. Is the American Nurses Association trying to get this bill or one like it introduced again?
Social workers need similar legislation to establish safe staffing levels in child protective services, schools, and hospitals.
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