Healthcare professionals in Ohio need your help.  We require legislation to help protect us and to keep us safe, so we can keep the public safe.

We need staffing ratios urgently. We need a bill that mirrors Senate Bill 1567 for nurses modified to include ratios for nursing homes. Other modifications to include ratios for respiratory therapists and STNA/CNA. 

Healthcare is a human right and it should be safe

For decades, the American healthcare system has intentionally understaffed healthcare workers to cut costs. Nurses, Physicians, respiratory therapists, STNAs, physical/occupational/speech therapists, pharmacists,  and more healthcare workers of various disciplines take on more with less resources (intentional understaffing) while hospitals profit.

Those cost of those choices impact patient safety. Healthcare workers need sufficient time and resources to care for their patients safely and to maintain their dignity.

For every additional patient a nurse cares for, a patient’s risk of dying increases by as much as 7% (Aiken 2014).

Unsafe staffing is contributing to moral injury (known as burnout), increased injuries,  and healthcare workers leaving bedside which creates a bigger issue.

Safe staffing saves lives. 

Suggested legislation includes:

• The Right to Invoke Safe Harbor in unsafe staffing conditions
• No capping of pay. This includes agency staff and those that are hourly who stay with a facility for years. Hourly Staff who stay with a company for 30 years wages should reflect that time and experience
• No mandatory overtime.
• No human trafficking to solve staffing issues. Bringing nurses and staff from other countries and paying them less and giving them more workload is absolutely unacceptable. 
• Stronger legislation against violence against healthcare workers. Also, whistleblower coverage for staff who choose to press charges in these instances in the workplace.
• (A) One patient in trauma emergency units.
  (B) One patient in operating room units, provided 
        that a minimum of 1 additional person serves as a scrub 
        assistant in such unit.
  (C) Two patients in critical care units, 
        including neonatal intensive care units, emergency 
        critical care and intensive care units, labor and 
        delivery units, coronary care units, acute respiratory 
        care units, postanesthesia units, and burn units.
    (D) Three patients in emergency room units, 
          pediatrics units, stepdown units, telemetry units, 
          antepartum units, and combined labor, deliver, and 
          postpartum units.
     (E) Four patients in medical-surgical units, 
          intermediate care nursery units, acute care psychiatric 
          units, and other specialty care units.
     (F) Five patients in rehabilitation units and 
                  skilled nursing units.
     (G) Six patients in postpartum (3 couplets) units 
          and well-baby nursery units. SB 1567
• In those ratios, CNA/STNA will not have more than 7 patients. 
• Respiratory therapists will need to chime in on the ratios here. (They should not have more patients than they have fingers however.)
• Averaging of ratios will not be allowed. Nursing management/administration will not be counted in the numbers.

Safe staffing levels are a public health issue, until we manage to have safe ratios the people will suffer.

See Senate Bill 1567