Safe Staffing in Nursing
The American Nurses Association’s State Government Affairs program monitors numerous nursing and healthcare related bills each year. They assess each bill for significance of relation to current healthcare issues and trends (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2015). One of the issues being addressed in 2015 is nurse staffing. This is not a new legislative issue, as it has been reviewed for several years now. Nurse staffing is taking center stage in the legislative arena because of the ongoing nursing shortage and the imminent retirement of many nurses. “Identifying and maintaining the appropriate number and mix of nursing staff is critical to the delivery of quality patient care. Numerous studies reveal an association …show more content…
Lobbying for safe staffing goes hand in hand with what a labor organization represents. The American Nurses Association works to ensure safe working environments for nurses on a national and state level. Labor laws protect nurses through collective bargaining by encouraging hospital management and executives to follow guidelines on patient-to-nurse ratios for safer practice (Budd et al., 2004). The legislation for safe staffing is needed to strengthen the power of labor laws in all states nationally to ensure safe patient-to-nurse ratios occur in every …show more content…
According to Jones (2015), “Trust can be institutional or interpersonal. A patient initially places trust in the institution [nursing profession] but the nurse earns interpersonal trust through the nurse-patient relationship” (p. 1424). Nurses must speak up and advocate for safer staffing guidelines within their specific hospitals and hospitals everywhere. Without voicing their concerns on a local and national level, nurses are impeding the advancement of safe staffing practices. Nurses spend most of their time with patients at the bedside. This makes them the best source of information when deciding what is safe for a patient in regards to
The American Nurses Association’s State Government Affairs program monitors numerous nursing and healthcare related bills each year. They assess each bill for significance of relation to current healthcare issues and trends (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2015). One of the issues being addressed in 2015 is nurse staffing. This is not a new legislative issue, as it has been reviewed for several years now. Nurse staffing is taking center stage in the legislative arena because of the ongoing nursing shortage and the imminent retirement of many nurses. “Identifying and maintaining the appropriate number and mix of nursing staff is critical to the delivery of quality patient care. Numerous studies reveal an association …show more content…
Lobbying for safe staffing goes hand in hand with what a labor organization represents. The American Nurses Association works to ensure safe working environments for nurses on a national and state level. Labor laws protect nurses through collective bargaining by encouraging hospital management and executives to follow guidelines on patient-to-nurse ratios for safer practice (Budd et al., 2004). The legislation for safe staffing is needed to strengthen the power of labor laws in all states nationally to ensure safe patient-to-nurse ratios occur in every …show more content…
According to Jones (2015), “Trust can be institutional or interpersonal. A patient initially places trust in the institution [nursing profession] but the nurse earns interpersonal trust through the nurse-patient relationship” (p. 1424). Nurses must speak up and advocate for safer staffing guidelines within their specific hospitals and hospitals everywhere. Without voicing their concerns on a local and national level, nurses are impeding the advancement of safe staffing practices. Nurses spend most of their time with patients at the bedside. This makes them the best source of information when deciding what is safe for a patient in regards to