Earlier this week we blogged about One2Four – The Way To Safe Patient Care.
NSW hospitals currently have NO MANDATORY NURSE STAFFING LEVELS. That’s BAD for nurses, and WORSE for patients.
For safe patient care, NSW hospitals need a mandatory ratio of one nurse to every four patients.
To help achieve this join the NSW Nurses’ Association in sending a message to government, demanding safe nurses to patient ratio of one2four.
Why don’t you leave a message of support on the One2Four website as well as here on Nurse Uncut.
Messages of support on the One2Four website include:
Lesley Brown-Kerr:
“Help our Nurses to care for your family/relatives and friends in the manner you expect … give them your support to win the fight for safe ratios nationwide”
Alexia Fuller:
“My grandfather was in hospital after a car acident at the end of 2009 to the end of 2010. He was in both St George Hospital and Prince of Wales Rehabilitation Unit, and in both hospitals we had wonderful nurses. However they were far too overworked. It could take up to 45 mins to even get a blanket. It’s shocking that these men and women are made to stretch themsleves far to thin and have the most important job in the hospital in helping to recover the patients. I think this is an excellent initiave which could go a long way to helping nursing staff and patients who are suffering.”
Kathryn Jones:
“Mandated Nurse: Patient ratios needs to be passed. There are too many near misses related to heavy workloads. More nurses will continue to leave and pts will continue to be on the receiving end of sub-optimal outcomes if the health system continues to function in the manner it is at present.”
Lisa White:
“Nurses just can’t do the job properly if there aren’t enough of them. No matter how hard or fast they work, if there aren’t enough on duty, patient care will suffer. I agree that there should be a minmum number of nurses working – child care centres have ratios, why not nurses? Victoria have ratios, why can’t NSW?”
Patient safety IS paramount. I don’t believe there would be any nurse out there that would want to go to work in a poorly staffed environment or to leave work feeling like they were unable to ‘nurse’ fully because all they had time for was the bare minimum. Nursing/Midwifery care such as emotional support, reassurance, imformed consent, therapeutic support, patient, parent and family education can all quickly go out of the window.
Mandatory nurse staffing levels are only part of a solution however. Adequate skill mix is equally as valuable and team nursing can work well in this environment. Supportive & approachable management and education staff that will advocate for the ward nurses are also very important. Valuing our untrained AiNs, student nurses/midwives, PSAs and Admin staff for the wonderful work they do to support us is also important and they also need to be acknowledged. We need to value the team that we work in at work and we need to collectively work as a team to convince the NSW government that our patients deserve to be safe.