Safe Staffing Campaign
Wednesday June 04, @08:41PM, by Owen R. Broadhurst
Subject : Legislative lobbying campaign
Summary :
I propose the Green-Rainbow Party support and endorse the Safe Care Campaign initiated by the Massachusetts Nurses Association to promote passage of H. 1282 providing for minimum staffing ratios.
Text :
The text of the Safe Staffing bill is here:

http://www.massnurses.org/News/safestaff/billtextdec2002.pdf

The Massachusetts Nurses Association has noted the following:

"Currently, there are no legal or regulatory mandates to ensure patients receive a level of nursing care that is based upon accepted standards of nursing practice or on their actual need for care. Instead, nurse staffing is left to individual facilities to determine and too often those staffing decisions are primarily driven by financial and budgetary factors. This has resulted in dramatic cuts in nurse staffing levels and an increase in the number of patients each nurse is expected to care for.

This legislation attempts to reverse these trends by mandating nurse staffing which is sufficient to care for the planned and unplanned needs of patients. It is based upon significant nursing research and experience."
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