Topic > Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2015: Breaking Down the Key Takeaways

The Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2015 (H.R. 2083/ S. 1132) was created to provide protection to patients by creating safe nurse staffing levels in hospitals. Although nurses are human beings and humans can make mistakes, having an improper balance in the nurse/patient ratio can lead to patient mortality, problems with patient safety, nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction among nurses. All of these aspects can contribute to inadequate and unsafe hospital care and hospital environments. This is important for healthcare because nurses are the healthcare workers of the hospital. Bedside care is direct patient care and hands-on healing that improves health. Being able to provide safe and appropriate healthcare is important to the healthcare user because it provides the highest level of healing and leaves patients with lower anxiety levels, which can also aid in physical, emotional and psychological healing. It also provides better outcomes for patients and reduces the frequency of hospital admissions, which is the ultimate goal. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Senator Jeff Merkley and Representatives Lois Capps and David Joyce introduced the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act to establish nurse staffing registration plans that utilize a board that is made up of direct care nurses. The aim is to ensure patient safety, reduce readmissions and improve nurse retention. The American Nurses Association endorsed this act. Use a balanced approach to determining staffing levels. Without adequate staffing levels, patients are at greater risk of infections, longer and more frequent hospital stays, medication errors, falls, injuries and possibly death. It also affects nursing staff and leads to nursing burnout, which is physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion due to stress and overcommitment related to disengagement from work (Sachs & Jones, 2015). Ultimately, an adequate nurse-to-patient ratio can make the difference between a patient's life or death, making this an important health care issue. This act considers the level of clinical experience, educational preparation, and professional certification that a registered nurse has. Also consider the complexity, quantity and stability of patients. It also includes that registered nurses should not work on units for which they are not trained or oriented, procedures for investigating and receiving complaints, protects the reporting of illegal or dishonest activity, and provides public reporting of personnel information. This act essentially aims to protect both patients and nurses to provide the most excellent care (Sachs & Jones, 2015). This act keeps patients safe by reducing the amount of adverse events, medical errors, and preventable injuries and illnesses acquired in the hospital. It reduces costs because it decreases the number of unnecessary hospital admissions, the number of adverse patient events, and hospital readmissions (American Nurses Association, 2015). Evidence of the importance of the relationship between nursing staff and patients can be found in research. In the article “Hospital Nurse Staffing and Patient Mortality, Nurse Burnout, and Job Dissatisfaction,” a cross-sectional analysis of linked data from 168 non-federal adult general hospitals in Pennsylvania was obtained. The results of the study showed that there were higher levels ofemotional exhaustion and greater amounts of job dissatisfaction in nurses who worked in hospitals with high patient-to-nurse ratios, leading to unsafe environments and increased errors. There is also an increase in complications and mortality related to those complications. In hospitals with high patient-nurse ratios, surgical patients had higher risks of 30-day mortality due to infections, complications, and errors (Aiken et al., 2002). In “Nursing Staffing and Patient Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study of Trend and Seasonality,” the study showed that having better ratios reduces the number of patient falls and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. Patient falls can lead to more hospitalizations longer and major complications, and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers can lead to infections, sepsis, and longer hospitalizations. Having more nurses increases availability to be able to turn and reposition patients to prevent pressure ulcers, and also increases availability of patients. nurses to be able to take patients to the bathroom and answer call bells more efficiently to prevent falls (He , Staggs, Bergquist-Beringer, & Dunton, 2016). treatment in community hospitals,” the study conducted demonstrated that the most common medication errors were dose omission, improper doses, and failure to follow protocols. Dosing omissions were most likely due to work overload, and incorrect doses were most likely due to knowledge gaps on the part of healthcare professionals. Their findings demonstrated that nursing staff is an important part of preventing medication errors. When hospitals had a greater number of professional nurses, there was a decrease in the number of medication errors. When there was a decrease in the number of registered nurses, there was an increase in the number of medication errors. Medication errors lead to unnecessary hospital charges and place patients in danger of complications, necessary hospitalizations, permanent harm, interventions to prevent harm or death, monitoring, or death (Frith, Anderson, Tseng, & Fong, 2012). In “Nursing Missed Care Is Linked to Patient Satisfaction: A Cross-Sectional Study of U.S. Hospitals,” research showed that, on average, nurses miss 2.7 out of 12 required care tasks per shift. This consisted primarily of missing the opportunity to comfort and talk to patients and to update and develop care plans, but also consisted of not being able to teach or consult with patients and their families, provide oral hygiene, adequately document care, or inform themselves on patients, provide adequate skin care, administer medications on time, prepare patients and their families for discharge, provide appropriate pain management, coordinate patient care, and perform treatments and procedures. All of these things are important to the healing process of patients. While it did not lead to death in this study, it leaves open the possibility of adverse outcomes and readmissions to hospital. Understaffed nurses leave tasks unfinished due to the inability to accomplish everything during the shift due to the increased number of patients for each nurse (Lake, Germack, & Viscardi, 2016). Although there are many benefits to this law, there are some problems with regulating the ratio of nursing staff to patients. The first problem is that there are many variables that influence patient outcomes and staffing. The complexity of the unit, the amount of care of.