Limits needed to ensure quality patient care
A hospital administrator wrote recently to criticize the nurse staffing ratios bill, HB 2604. He was concerned about the quality of health care provided and the shortage of nurses in Illinois.
The nurse staffing ratios bill, HB 2604, seeks to establish reasonable limits on the amount of work responsibility for patient's health each nurse must shoulder. Why is this needed? As a nurse who worked in bedside nursing, I experienced being asked to do more than I could and that detracted from the quality of care I was able to provide for patients. I worked as hard as I could, often did not take breaks even to go to the bathroom. Yet I was still unable to get all the work done and stayed late to complete my paperwork on my own time.
Unfortunately, it seems that bean counters instead of health care professionals are making the decisions about how many patients a nurse should care for. This bill HB260 is supported by my organization the NNU which represents what real health care professionals, nurses, want and see as best for our patients as well as nurses.
Healthcare providers, especially nurses and including many doctors, go into health care to help people, not to make a boatload of money. We need to establish some limits on how many patients nurses are being required to be responsible for. Nurses are responsible for the health and lives of their patients. The hospitals won't reduce profits to benefit patients but nurses will do what it takes to ensure welfare of their patients.
About the nursing shortage. If hospitals were not requiring nurses to take more responsibility than is safe, thus over working us and risking patient health and safety; then more of us would want to continue working in health care.
Dan Bailey
Wheaton