The Michigan Nurses Association, the largest organization for registered nurses and healthcare professionals in the state, has launched an ad campaign in support of the bipartisan Safe Patient Care Act.
The Safe Patient Care Act sets safe limits on the number of patients nurses can be assigned, curbs excessive mandatory nurse overtime, and requires hospitals to disclose their RN-to-patient ratios. Nurses often say maximizing profit, rather than providing safe patient care, motivates healthcare executives’ decisions about how many patients to assign to a nurse. There is no law that limits the number of patients that can be assigned.
A January poll found that 42% of nurses reported knowing of a patient’s death due to unsafe RN staffing levels, nearly double the numbers from 2016. Ninety-three percent of nurses in the poll supported a safe staffing law.
Reporting for WGRT – Choze Powell
