Mandatory Nurse Patient Ratio

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Mandatory Nurse to Patient Ratio in Louisiana

Keller Graduate School of Management
GM 550 Managerial Communication
October 15, 2013
Dr David Scoma
Nov11 SecA

Mandatory Nurse to Patient Ratio in Louisiana Hospitals

Safe staffing is appropriate levels of registered nurses (RNs) to always meet the care needs of the patient (ANA, 2011). Definition of nurse staffing is the number of nurses or nursing hours, the number of patients or patient’s days and the skill mix of nurses. The definition of workload is the amount of intensity of work a nurse encounters in a given period of time. The nurse’s workload is affected by: the number of patients, patient acuity, patient throughput, unit design, and technologies resources, amount of administrative tasks, and skill and education of nurses.
Louisiana has a long history of providing care to its poor through its state run hospitals. Recently, the Louisiana legislature recognized that the indigent care system is in crisis because the state’s nine charity care hospitals have been beset by problems such as chronic understaffing (National, n.d.). Hospitals with low nurse staffing levels tend to have higher rates of poor patient outcomes such as pneumonia, shock, cardiac arrest, and urinary tract infections, according to research funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and others (Agency, 2004).
Inadequate staffing can have an effect on patient outcomes including: dissatisfaction, adverse events, death, failure to rescue, education deficits, and readmission. Nursing outcomes can be affected also: dissatisfaction, burnout, stress, injury/illness, absenteeism, turnover and vacancies. There can also be negative affects financially: unproductive workforce expenditures, lower productivity, turnover costs, agency costs, absenteeism costs, worker’s comp claims, unnecessary patient care cost, longer

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