The medical community is divided over a November ballot measure that would make Massachusetts only the second state with such staffing requirements.
Voters this fall could make Massachusetts only the second state in the country to limit the number of patients that hospital nurses can help at one time.
Question 1 would create legal ratios based on the type of patients that nurses are dealing with. Nurses aiding women during birth and up to two hours after, for instance, would be limited to one patient. If they're working with children, they could see four patients at once. In the psychiatric ward, nurses could help up to five patients.
While nurses unions and progressive political groups back the ballot measure, most medical groups -- including the Massachusetts chapter of the American Nurses Association and the state's Health and Hospital Association -- oppose it.
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4 comments:
This should be a nation wide mandate. Hospitals make more than enough money to hire adequate staffing. It's safer for the patients and nurses. Sorry if it means that the hospital big wigs can only go on 4 exotic vacations per year instead of 6.
Pay for performance or you’ll screw the nursing profession just as the crab picking industry was screwed “in the name of fairness”.
Then patients will get sent to different hospitals or Wait for 20 hrs. Because no grant money is being issued on the bill to hire more nurses and bigger hospitals. Government controlling patient care. Snowflakes don't see it...
absolutely. In the past, I have worked in RI where they use ratios and DE where they do not. The care is much better in RI vs DE in a number of ways. The things I was required to do in RI would have to be done by a nurse in DE. And judging by the lack of skills in that and other areas, that is probably a good and necessary thing.
One simply cannot give quality care to each patient if they have too many patients to care for, it's just that simple. There are different levels of care. Some are total care, self-care, and everything in-between.
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