The Need For Safe Nurse Staffing Essay -- Nurse-to-Patient Ratios

In the past two decades, there has been a push for appropriate staff to client ratios. However, measuring client needs and nursing efforts have been around since 1922 (Lewinski-Corwin, 1922, pp. 603-606). The earliest recorded effort was by the New York Academy of Medicine. Superintendents and nurses from ten training schools documented the time spent providing bedside care. From complied information, the researchers revealed each client required an average of five hours and four minutes of care in a 24-hour period. From these observations, they evaluated staffing issues in New York City. At that time, none of the hospitals were sufficiently staffed (Lewinski-Corwin, 1922, pp. 603-606). Still today, nurse staffing is a crucial health policy issue. Since the 1980s, the nursing profession has taken on more prominence in America with a large focus on research studies. In fact, U.S. Public Law 99-158, Health Research Extension Act of 1985, authorized the National Center for Nursing Research (NCNR) at National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Health Research Extension Act of 1985, 1985). With U.S. Public Law 103-43, NIH Revitalization Act of 1993, the NCNR was formally changed to the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) (NIH Revitalization Act of 1993, 1993). The NINR started constructing purposeful research projects, which produced a positive correlation between the number of staff and quality of care. However, the 1996 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report expressed, at that time, no significance between nurse staffing and clients’ outcomes in acute-care hospitals (Institute of Medicine Staff, Davis, Sloan, & Wunderlich, 1996, p. 9). For a while, hospitals were cutting staff, using the IOM report in 1996 as evidence-based rese... ...ww.nejm.org Nelson, R. (2008, March). AJN reports: California’s ratio law, four years later. American Journal of Nursing, 108(3), 25-26. Retrieved from http://www.nursingcenter.com NIH Revitalization Act of 1993, 42 U.S.C. Â § 1511 (1993), http://history.nih.gov. Nursetraveler. (1999). The original bill that put staffing ratios in place! Retrieved September 10, 2011, from http://nursetraveler.org Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2003, S. 991, 108th Cong. (2003), http://thomas.loc.gov. Sovie, M. D., & Jawad, A. F. (2001, December). Hospital restructuring and its impact on outcomes. nursing staff regulations are premature. Journal of Nursing Administration, 31(12), 588-600. Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com Tone, B. (n.d.). California nurse-to-patient ratio still undecided, comment period ahead. Retrieved September 10, 2011, from http://www.nursezone.com