Creating a mandatory staffing ratio between nurses and patients will prevent many medical errors. Medical errors account for 98,000 preventable patient deaths each year, these can be caused by distractions, interruptions, ineffective communication, etc (Townsend, 2013). Over working our nurses can create higher nurse burnout and worsening health. We don’t need research to show that fatigue and sleep deprivation causes memory problems, slower reaction time, longer information processing time, and many other issues that leads to unsafe outcomes for patients and nurses themselves. On top of high patient to nurse ratios, most hospitals in the US are still allowing nurses to work 12 hours shifts because that means they don’t have to hire as many
