The Nursing Crisis
After reading the article, “Too Many Patients to Cover, Nurses Say,” July 15, about nurses who staged a sit-in because they want the staffing ratio standards that took effect in January to be enforced, I ask: Have they read any newspaper in the last couple of years? There is a nursing shortage! Where do these nurses think hospitals should find, train and hire more nurses?
Would they like to choose which patients to send home once the nursing ratio has been reached during their shift?
Hospitals have been and will be unable to meet the new standards signed into legislation by then-Gov. Gray Davis: two intensive-care patients per nurse, 13 emergency-room patients per nurse, eight medical/surgical patients per nurse. Sounds nice.
Not reasonable, not possible.
Maybe instead of staging a sit-in, those nurses should have been out recruiting, working to train more nurses, and/or encouraging their friends, family and neighbors to go into nursing.
Nikki F. Strauss
Long Beach
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
