We Need More Nurses.
That is the title of a recent opinion piece by Alexandra Robbins in the NY Times. You can read it here:
[We Need More Nurses](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/opinion/we-need-more-nurses.html?emc=edit_th_20150528&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=42331508&_r=1)
The piece highlights a growing concern in the American health care system: hospitals putting profit margins ahead of patient safety. As hospitals are increasingly pushing for greater profits, nursing staffing levels have suffered. And as a result, the piece highlights, there is a direct correlation between inadequate nursing staffing levels and patient harm and death.
Ms. Robbins cites a number of studies in support of this premise. For every 100 surgical patients who die in hospitals where nurses are each assigned 4 patients, the number of deaths would rise to 131 if each nurse was assigned 8 patients.
Adding one extra pediatric surgical patient to a nurse’s patient load increases each child patient’s likelihood for readmission to the hospital by 50%. 50%!
One study found that if every hospital brought nursing levels up to the levels of the top quarter of all American hospitals, 40,000 lives would be saved each and every year.
Unfortunately, too many hospital administrators trade the lives and safety of patients for an increase in profits. And when nurses are fed up and speak up, they are often intimidated and otherwise quieted.
It is for this very reason that in the medical malpractice context, it is often difficult to make a case that an injury or death was directly caused by a hospital choosing to understaff nurses. Nurses in such situations, when something awful has happened, feel terrible. But they also don’t want to lose their jobs. So they deny that they didn’t have adequate time to properly address their patients’ issues, or else conveniently forget the exact details of the date in question.
It’s no surprise why this occurs: as hospitals continue to find ways to remain profitable, nursing positions will be in high demand. As much as they may be conflicted, it is understandable that a nurse would want to keep employed.
