Lower reimbursement rates from government health programs and managed care plans have put the squeeze on medical facilities, large and small. In an effort to trim costs, many hospitals have cut nursing staffs and replaced RNs with less-trained nurses and aides. As a society we have to decide what we value. Hospitals will spend dollars on technology. Hanging over nurses and their patients is the shadow of medical errors.
Nurses are the hospital sentinels for patient safety.
ANA's Mary Foley talks about a colleague who was hospitalized for four days and was shocked by the lack of nursing support. When the team is overstretched, there is no room for the unexpected. It's not good for any of us that nurses are so unhappy. And it's not simply to add nurses to staffs and tinker with nurse-patient ratios. The challenge is much broader.