Safe Staffing Ratio Analysis: Nurse To Patient Ratios

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nursing to patient Ratios.

What are the facts

Establishing safe staffing ratios is a nationwide movement to protect patients. Nurses have requested the assistance of elected officials on the state and federal level to protect patients by holding hospitals accountable for the provision of adequate nurse staffing through legislative or regulatory means. Safe staffing ratios is the setting of minimum ratios of staff-patient for each type of care unit, minimum-staffing ratio represents the ratio that is deemed safe for providing quality care to patient. California, legislation mandated specific nurse to patient ratios (1: 5 respectively) based on patient acuity. In 1999, legislation was enacted in CA. calling for regulations to be adopted that would define the same unit specific nurse to patient ratios to be utilized in all nursing units in all California hospitals. Currently, a few states now require specific ratios in specialty areas such as intensive care and labor and delivery units, but none require ratios in every patient care unit in every hospital as required in the

California regulations. The mandated ratios represent minimum requirements that may be
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Hospitals with 150 to 300 beds also are more likely to have low RN staffing ratios in medical-surgical units. In contrast, small hospitals with less than 50 beds have lower staffing ratios in intensive care units. There appear to be clusters of low-staff hospitals in certain counties. There is little research to suggest that minimum staffing mandates will improve quality of care, but research on this topic is improving rapidly. Spetz concludes that the "data suggest that some hospitals staff substantially lower than the state average. The costs of minimum staffing mandates could be quite large, particularly in certain regions of

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