Nurses' publicity stunt backs minimum-staffing legislation
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
By Jim McKay, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Nurses from across Western Pennsylvania use a gurney to wheel 10,000 postcards - each calling for mandatory minimum staffing levels - to a waiting ambulance yesterday at the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers, Downtown. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)
A group of registered nurses packed an ambulance bound for Harrisburg yesterday with 10,000 post cards signed by their peers calling for mandatory minimum staffing levels in Pennsylvania's hospitals.
The goal of the publicity stunt conducted at the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers, Downtown, was to persuade state legislators to pass separate bills that would establish minimum hospital staffing levels and ban mandatory overtime for health-care workers except in declared emergencies.
"Pennsylvania nurses are fed up with hospital staffing conditions that put our patients at risk," said Diane Lataille, a registered nurse who works for Allegheny General Hospital. "We are determined to do something about it."
Roughly 80 to 100 nurses from hospitals across the region -- most of whom belong to either the Service Employees International Union or the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals -- attended the event.
They soundly applauded speakers who decried the working conditions in hospitals, the long hours spent on the job and chronic staff shortages that they believe negatively impact patient care.
"A nurse goes home at the end of her shift and lies awake at night wondering if she missed anything," said Christa McGinnis, a registered nurse who would not say where she worked for fear of retribution. "Trying to care for too many patients is frustrating and stressful and is not the kind of care we are trying to provide."
The Safe Staffing and Quality Care Act, introduced in June by state Sen. Allyson Schwartz, D-Philadelphia, and Rep. Timothy Solobay, D-Canonsburg, would require one registered nurse for each patient in operating rooms and trauma units and one nurse for every three patients in emergency rooms and pediatric units. The staffing rations proposed in the bill are similar to legislation passed in California in 1999 but yet to be enacted.
Solobay, Schwartz and other legislators met the petitioners when they arrived in Harrisburg later in the afternoon. Their bill remains in committee and the legislators said they would reintroduce it early in the 2003 legislative session.
When they do, it will have the support of state senator-elect and city Councilman Jim Ferlo. "It's a broken system," Ferlo said to applause from nurses gathered at the hotel. "We have a for-profit system that puts profits before people."
Also discussed at the Harrisburg news conference was a separate bill sponsored by state Sen. Christine Tartaglione, D-Philadelphia, and Rep. Dan Surra, R-Elk, that would limit mandatory overtime. That bill, like the Schwartz and Solobay effort, has not moved from committee.
The speakers in Pittsburgh cited a study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that concluded surgical patients died more often in hospitals with high patient-to-nurse ratios and that nurses in those situations were more likely to experience burnout and job dissatisfaction.
As might be expected, organizations representing hospitals in Pennsylvania do not support the staffing ratio legislation.
The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania opposes the legislation, saying there are no simple answers to the industry's shortage of nurses. It took issue with the JAMA article, saying its conclusion could not be substantiated.
"Without question, the nursing shortage has stressed the nation's health-care system -- patients and families feel it, nurses feel it and hospitals feel it," said association spokeswoman Deborah Saline. "However, mandating staffing ratios does not create nurses. There simply aren't enough nurses graduating from Pennsylvania nursing schools to fill all the vacancies."
Marc Cammarata, of the Hospital Council of Western Pennsylvania, said he thought the "political capital" being spent on the pushing mandatory staffing ratios would be better used in locating $250 million in funding for the federal Nurse Reinvestment Act, which would set up grants and scholarships for nurse education. The bill signed by President Bush set up a statutory framework but was not funded.
Jim McKay can be reached at jmckay@post-gazette.com
or 412-263-1322.