Beyond Nurse Staffing Ratios, Creating a New Reality

Christine Schulman, immediate past president of AACN, delivers a rousing call to change nurse staffing as we know it. She urges us to look at this issue holistically and shift the conversation from staffing being viewed as an expense to being considered an investment in patient safety. Hear her passion and ignite or stoke your own.
More Here: www.aacn.org/c...

[@kali911doll9]

I am purposely going to be apart of this journey! To fight for future nurses and patients!❤

[@sarahepperson6636]

Most hospital administrations max-out nurses' patient load in order to save money by paying fewer nurses at one time during each scheduled shift. It absolutely leads to poorer patient outcomes. Instead of supplying a unit with enough nurses to have 4-5 each (safe, calm, controlled environment), we are consistently given 6 medical-surgical patients each and sometimes the charge nurse will even have a few herself... I could go on and on about how those working conditions were INSANE. I instructed all the nurses I worked with to call Safe Harbor IMMEDIATELY if they try to hand over a 7th patient (and yes, it almost happened several times). Acute care staff nurses within hospitals are treated like garbage, and I'm dying to speak out on it also. Since graduating with my BSN in 2016, the staffing ratios have just gotten worse and worse... more and more of us are leaving the profession for this reason, and many others.

[@jaimetolentino7951]

I think the government needs to step in and pass a law that forces hospitals to staff appropriately based on the number of beds they have, the volume of patients that come into the ER, etc. Only then will they be forced to provide the care that the patients deserve. Another metric would be how long patients are waiting in the ER and tie that to the amount of reimbursement Medicare and Medicaid pays them. If the government starts passing laws to improve the current situation, guaranteed the healthcare providers will fix short staffing overnight. Just my humble opinion

[@isabellebrn2224]

Agreed! Nursing homes have horrible nurse to residents ratio. I can’t wait for that to change.

[@lukesterification]

There is a certain special hell that awaits hospital administrators

[@joystitched1295]

This sounds like an excuse for "staffing for acuity/team nursing" aka....well you know those two are pretty low acuity so I think we can put a nurse with 3 ICU level patients if 2 of them are lower acuity. No. Just no. They want to save money, and continue their lean staffing BS. NURSES know what a safe assignment is, not healthcare administrators and financial gurus. this whole 3:1 ICU ratio that has become the norm across the country needs to stop, or the strikes won't stop. And the nurses leaving in droves won't stop. don't get me started on the 8-9:1 on med surg, 5:1 on stepdown, or infinity:1 for ER. There NEEDS to be a set number standard, and hospitals NEED to be held accountable. If you staffed appropriately, there wouldn't be such a need for insane pay increases and insane travel nurse costs. Culture and morale would be better, burnout less. I took 3 vented patients and was almost given a 4th vented patient and when I refused, the director who made this request to the charge nurse and never directly asked me or talked to me, came in, took the 4th patient and wouldn't even look me in the eye. And it was me, another nurse, and her in a makeshift ICU overflow by ourselves with what ended up being 8 patients by the end of the shift.

[@joystitched1295]

Nurses are not greedy, we are just sad for our patients and their poor outcomes, scared for our licenses aka livelihood, and tired of PIZZA PARTIES

[@BeataClasp]

Hospitals need to implement processes that make the nurses job more streamline. This includes technology, staffing, and nurse invented products like our medical line organizer.

[@RyanYudelmo1]

Staffing is an investment

[@sarahepperson6636]

And remember, they don't pay you based on how hard/well you work-- But on how easy it is to REPLACE you....

[@TheMabes69]

Yeah. We're still waiting, lol.

[@Desertmoonlight23]

and here we are 5 years later, worse off than ever before. The problem is nurses are talking to non-nurses to change this. Those are the decision-makers.