Nurses call on Provincial Health Ministers to ensure safe nurse staffing levels for patients

Nurses call on Provincial Health Ministers to ensure safe nurse staffing levels for patients Excessive nursing workload is negatively affecting patient outcomes, says a new study released today by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions at a meeting with provincial health ministers in Halifax.

UNA First Vice-President Bev Dick attended was at the Halifax meeting with other nurses’ union elected officials from across Canada.

As a result of the study’s conclusions, nurses are calling on the provincial health ministers to work with them to answer the question, just how many patients can one nurse safely care for?

“Matching nursing levels to number and acuity of patients pays off. It pays off for patients in terms of improved health. It pays off for nurses in terms of reduced illness and injury in the workplace, and it pays off for governments by lowering costs of nursing overtime and turnover, less hospital readmission and shorter lengths of stay,” said CFNU President Linda Silas, RN, in a news release today.

The report, Nursing Workload and Patient Care: Understanding the value of nurses, the effects of excessive workload and how nurse-patient ratios and dynamic staffing models can help, surveyed Canadian and international evidence relating nurse staffing to patient outcomes, including mortality. It also captures the results from three consultations of experts and the experiences of frontline nurses.

In the CFNU news release, Dr. Lois Berry, RN, PhD, the author of the report, asked: “Ensuring safe levels of nursing care is a win-win, so we all need to ask – why are we not there yet?”

“In researching this report, I was struck both by the amount of evidence supporting safe nurse staffing to improve patient safety and quality of care, and the lack of progress toward better care for patients and families through improved nursing levels,” Dr. Berry said.

Inadequate nurse staffing has been proven to be associated with increases in mortality rates, hospital-acquired pneumonia, urinary tract infections, sepsis, hospital-acquired infections, pressure ulcers, upper gastrointestinal bleeding, shock and cardiac arrest, medication errors, falls, failure to rescue and longer than expected length of hospital stay.

The report calls on governments to commit, now, to safe staffing models across the continuum of care, acute, long-term and community care.