Nurse Patient Ratio

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When it comes to nurse to patient ratios, what effects do you feel that the ratios have on both patient and nurse safety? When it comes to the nurse to patient ratio it seems to be causing issues for the patient, such as medication errors, nosocomial infections as well as stress, burnout and compact fatigue in nurses. When there is more patients and not enough staff to accommodate those the patient’s, it puts the patient at risk for inadequate care. The ratios tend to put a lot of burden on the staff and the staff are unable to care for the patients properly and the patients and nurses are both dealing with the consequences at the end. There has been numerous complaints regarding patient care and this came from the patients themselves. The …show more content…
Burnout is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization of patients, and feelings of lack of personal accomplishment by caregivers, which could negatively affect nurse job satisfaction and voluntary turnover (Aiken 2012). Burnout usually occurs due to long extended 12 hours shifts which are very popular among the nursing staff. The 12 hour shifts are used to aid in flexibility within the homes of the nursing staff as well as the facility they work for. Recently these 12 hours shifts have turned into lengthier shifts such as 13 to 14 hour shifts due to delay in charting or fluctuations in a patient’s condition. This alone can cause an impact on both the patient and the nurse’s …show more content…
There are such laws being implemented in certain states such as California. Final regulations were put in place in the summer of 2003 and they started to implement these laws across the board as of January 1, 2004. The law is named the AB 394 which establishes specific numerical nurse-to-patient ratios in acute care, acute psychiatric, and specialty hospitals in California (J.K. 2004). The ratios are the maximum number of patients that may be assigned to an RN during one shift. The law requires additional RNs be assigned based on a documented patient classification system that measures nursing care as well as the patients’ needs, including severity of illness and complexity of clinical needs (J.K. 2004). With this law being in place the nurses in California have reported less burnout, stress as well as less patient mortality
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