Battles Over Hospital-Wide Nurse Staffing Ratios Persist
Unionized nurses and their supporters cite a clear correlation between staffing ratios and quality of care and are calling for new laws. But hospital associations say there’s a lack of conclusive data.
State health policy analysts in Massachusetts and Minnesota are fighting new battles in the ongoing war between hospitals and organized nurses over staffing ratios.
A law requiring 1:1 and 1:2 nurse-to-patient ratio in intensive care units went into effect in Massachusetts in September. But health researchers in Minnesota were unable to complete a study looking at the relationship between nursing levels and patient outcomes in their state.
Imagine that… healthcare professionals ( Nurses) concerned about staffing levels and the quality of pt care. Pharmacists seem to take staffing cuts… while Rx volume is increasing and just tries to “run faster on the wheel” Boards of Pharmacy, whose primary charge is to protect the public’s health and safety.. they are where ? and the Pharmacist in each Rx dept who is responsible to the Board of Pharmacy for the legal operation of the Rx dept… Doesn’t say anything about under staffing and med errors.
Makes one wonder where all the “care” is … in the community/retailing setting .. because your health is everything and you wish to be well…??
Filed under: General Problems
I have a few non-pharmacist friends who work in hospitals, it seems that most hospitals are cutting payroll wherever they can. She pretty much said even if they aren’t firing anyone, when someone leaves, they aren’t replacing them. It seems the only health care profession hospitals are hiring for anymore is nurses (and in the previous comment, new, low paid ones)….
Most likely because when they advertise they advertise the nurse patient ratio, not the doctor/patient, pharmacist/patient, or therapy/patient ration…. Yes the nurse/patient is 1:4, but there is 1 pharmacist for over 400 patients… who checks and verifies the drugs the nurse gives. But patients don’t care about that….
My mom was admitted to the hospital yesterday for suspected TIA, vertigo confusion and sudden memory issues Lucily stroke was ruled out. I was talking to her nurse about things happening with healthcare employees (I told her I was a pharmacist, she told my parents how lucky they were to have one in the family, then was shocked to hear there were 2, my sister in North Carolina), even gave her the URL to the article about the pharmacy school bubble…she had some very interesting things from the nursing perspective. Said she has noticed in the past 5 years, the hospitals have also been working diligently to push out as many of the experienced nurses as possible and hire ‘newbies’ She said it concerns many of the nurses because they very much feel the experienced ones are needed to make sure that ‘old knowledge’ is passed on. I just wanted to pass her thoughts on. Legacy nurses are getting screwed as bad and as worse as legacy pharmacists.
What do big corporations look to cut first? It is always payroll. They always want to get more work from less people. A hospital is in a battle between quality and expenses. Mostly cutting expenses means cutting quality. Less number of nurses the less care the patients get. Does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out.
[…] https://www.pharmaciststeve.com/?p=9137 […]