WASHINGTON – Even before the pandemic, staffing in hospitals was low but the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem.
Many nurses and frontline workers have left to become travel nurses or left the profession altogether because of the burnout.
Now, the Washington State Nurses Association is trying to get safe staffing standards… Giving frontline workers more protection in the workplace when it comes to overtime — meal and rest breaks
A 30-year research report came out earlier this year by a researcher at George Washington university stating the only way to improve hospital staffing is with safe staffing standards.
“And our team here at G.W. did an extensive longitudinal study looking at the differences and differences, so we looked longitudinally to see before and during and after each of these 3 kinds of laws and compared them to states that had no laws and essentially what we found was that the only kind of law that had any effect on nurse staffing or the nurse support staffing was the mandate,” said Dr. Patricia Pittman, a researcher at George Washington University, Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity.
What she is referring to is Assembly Bill 394 in California, which was signed in 1999 and took effect in 2004.
This law established specific nurse to patient ratios as well as laws restricting unlicensed nursing staff in hospital clinical areas where they do not have training
Both House Bill 1868 and Senate Bill 5751 in Washington, are being compared to Assembly Bill 394 in California, and the positive impacts it had on nursing staff.
