Set Safe RN-to-Patient Staffing Ratios

Urge Your Legislator to Support RN-to-Patient Ratios in Our Hospitals.

“As nurses, we want to be able to know at the end of the day that we gave our best care every hour, to every patient our hands touched.” - Deborah Bonn, Director of the SEIU Nurse Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Nurses know that one nurse can give adequate, safe care to only so many patients.

House Bill 147 sets a minimum acceptable standard, a baseline of safety, for every patient in our hospitals.

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Talking Points

For each additional patient over four in a registered nurse’s care, the risk of death increases by 7 percent for surgical patients. In hospitals with eight patients per nurse, patients have a 31 percent greater risk of dying than those in hospitals with four patients per nurse. Source: Linda Aiken, et. al., “Hospital Nurse Staffing and Patient Mortality, Nurse Burnout, and Job Dissatisfaction,” Journal of the American Medical Association, October 23/30, 2002.
HB 147 sets the maximum number of patients that can be assigned to an RN by department. Ratios must be adjusted down to account for higher patient acuity.
Setting safe RN-to-patient ratios will increase nurse satisfaction and more nurses will return and stay at the bedside.

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