The Honorable Rosalyn R. Dance
Senate of Virginia
Room No: 322
Richmond, VA 23218
[email protected]
Dear Senator Rosalyn R. Dance,
My name is Isha Shah, and I am a Registered Nurse in Richmond, Virginia. As one of your constituents I am writing to ask you to oppose House Bill H.R. 1821/S. 2353, which is the Registered Nurse Staffing Act. Under this act the Congress has introduced general guidelines that the staffing laws should fall under and leaves the final decision upon to the individual states. One of the guidelines that I oppose is for legislators to mandate specific nurse to patient ratios. Legislators’ decision to mandate fixed nurse to patient ratio can negatively impact nursing practice and patient care and hence should be eliminated from the general guidelines to choose from.
Insufficient staffing ratios have a direct relation with patient safety and nurse satisfaction and can lead towards deteriorating work environment and increased hospital costs. Mandatory staffing ratios can improve unsafe workload but fails to enhance or fully utilize operational efficiency of an RN. This policy is harmful to nursing as it doesn’t look into the unit layout and ancillary support in determining the appropriate number, skills, experience, specialized training and education of nurses on a given unit. It is costly to implement and will only serve to increase stress on a health care system that is overburdened by an escalating national and international shortage of registered professional nurses and has the potential to create a greater risk to public safety.
Nursing staffing act should be revised by focusing on flexible and safe staffing plans and excluding the provision of mandatory fixed nurse to patient ratios. Staffing should extend beyond quantitative numbers and incorporate qualitative factors such as patient diagnosis, unit census, experience of the nursing staff and the support staff.
I ask you to oppose the fixed nurse to patient ratio aspect of the Nurse Staffing Act, Bill # H.R. 1821/S. 2353 in order to improve the provision of healthcare to the citizens of Richmond, Virginia. Thank you for your time and attention to this important issue.
Respectfully Yours,
Isha Shah
Registered Nurse
[email protected]
Senate of Virginia
Room No: 322
Richmond, VA 23218
[email protected]
Dear Senator Rosalyn R. Dance,
My name is Isha Shah, and I am a Registered Nurse in Richmond, Virginia. As one of your constituents I am writing to ask you to oppose House Bill H.R. 1821/S. 2353, which is the Registered Nurse Staffing Act. Under this act the Congress has introduced general guidelines that the staffing laws should fall under and leaves the final decision upon to the individual states. One of the guidelines that I oppose is for legislators to mandate specific nurse to patient ratios. Legislators’ decision to mandate fixed nurse to patient ratio can negatively impact nursing practice and patient care and hence should be eliminated from the general guidelines to choose from.
Insufficient staffing ratios have a direct relation with patient safety and nurse satisfaction and can lead towards deteriorating work environment and increased hospital costs. Mandatory staffing ratios can improve unsafe workload but fails to enhance or fully utilize operational efficiency of an RN. This policy is harmful to nursing as it doesn’t look into the unit layout and ancillary support in determining the appropriate number, skills, experience, specialized training and education of nurses on a given unit. It is costly to implement and will only serve to increase stress on a health care system that is overburdened by an escalating national and international shortage of registered professional nurses and has the potential to create a greater risk to public safety.
Nursing staffing act should be revised by focusing on flexible and safe staffing plans and excluding the provision of mandatory fixed nurse to patient ratios. Staffing should extend beyond quantitative numbers and incorporate qualitative factors such as patient diagnosis, unit census, experience of the nursing staff and the support staff.
I ask you to oppose the fixed nurse to patient ratio aspect of the Nurse Staffing Act, Bill # H.R. 1821/S. 2353 in order to improve the provision of healthcare to the citizens of Richmond, Virginia. Thank you for your time and attention to this important issue.
Respectfully Yours,
Isha Shah
Registered Nurse
[email protected]