Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2015

The Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2015 (H.R. 2083/ S. 1132) was created to provide patient protection by creating safe nurse staffing levels at hospitals. Although nurses are humans and humans can make mistakes, having an improper balance in nurse to patient ratios can lead to patient mortality, issues with patient safety, nursing burnouts, and job dissatisfaction among nurses. All of these aspects can contribute to improper and unsafe hospitalization care and hospital environment. This is important to healthcare because nurses are the caregivers of the hospital. Bedside care is direct patient care and the hands on healing that improves health. Being able to provide safe and proper bedside care is important to the healthcare consumer because it provides the highest level of healing and leaves patients with lower anxiety levels which also can help with physical, emotional, and psychological healing. It also provides better patient outcomes and reduces the frequency of hospitalizations, which is the ultimate goal. Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2015

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Senator Jeff Merkley and Representatives Lois Capps and David Joyce introduced the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act to establish register nurse staffing plans that uses a committee that is made up of direct care nurses. The purpose is to ensure patient safety, reduce readmission’s and improve nurse retention. The American Nurses Association endorsed this act. It uses a balanced approach to determine the staffing levels. Without appropriate staffing levels, patients are at increased risk for infection, longer and more frequent hospital stays, medication errors, falls, injuries, and possibly death. It also affects the nursing staff and leads to nursing burnouts, which is the physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion because of stress and over engagement related to disengagement of the job (Sachs & Jones, 2015).

Ultimately, adequate nurse patient ratios can be the difference between a patient living or dying, which makes this an important halt care issue.Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2015