Stakeholders and Action Plan

Key Stakeholders:

The legislator for the bill is Democrat Daniel Inouye from Hawaii, who identified the needs addressed by the bill and drew the bill up.
Key stakeholders and legislators for the bill include patients, nurses, other health care staff, taxpayers, and hospitals. The patients, nurses, other health care staff, and taxpayers all stand to gain from passing this legislation. There will be safer standards set in place for patients, who will receive higher quality health care from nurses. Nurses will be less overwhelmed, less prone to medical errors, more able to meet patients' comprehensive demands, and able to improve every aspect of their care on each patient. Other health care staff will also be able to meet demands more effectively because nurses will be able to carry out orders and delegate tasks more responsibly and consistently. Finally, taxpayers stand to benefit from this bill as well, in that they will receive better health care overall, which lowers health care costs. The hospitals may resist the bill only because it requires them to add multiple new salaries to their payroll in terms of meeting a quota of nursing jobs. However, hospitals also stand to gain credibility from the bill because the reputation of the hospitals will improve with better standardized care levels, attracting more patients to their facility and making better business for them.


Stance: We are in SUPPORT of the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2007

Why?

To:

- ADVOCATE for other nurses, the patients, and the hospital facilities

- Create new nursing jobs

- Reduce nurse dissatisfaction in jobs

• 73 % of nurses do not feel the staffing on their unit is sufficient (South Carolina Nurses Association, 2008)

- Increase patient safety and "reduce this public health crisis"

• A study in Australia identified 18,000 hospital deaths that could have been prevented with higher nurse staffing (Armstrong, 2006)

- Reduce the cost to treat hospital acquired complications

• As mentioned in the previous blog post, there is a correlation between higher nurse staffing and lower rates of VAP (McCoy 2007)

- Include RNs in creating safe staffing requirements as stated in the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2007

- Clearly communicate with patients through hospital postings the number of staff involved in the care on their floor

- Reduce staff system discrepencies based on the type of payer (ANA, 2008)

- Ensure consistency of quality of care and ensuring the "nurse's worklife is appropriate (ANA, 2008)"

Political Action Plan:
Our political action plan includes to encourage current and future nurses, health care professionals, and patients, family, and friends to write to their senators, requesting more attention and focus on passing the bill. You can also visit the ANA's website and read more about how safe staffing saves lives. We also must encourage everyone to stay involved in the news and in getting this bill passed. We will keep the blog updated and respond to anyone who asks us questions about the bill so that accurate information can be disseminated and goals can be created by our blog community.

Armstrong, F (2006). Safe staffing saves lives. Australian Nursing Journal, 13(10), 22.

ANA (2008). ANA principles on safe nurse staffing. American Nurses Association.
Retrieved from http://www.safestaffingsaveslives.org/ on October 14, 2008.

McCoy, K. (2007). More hospital nurses mean fewer infections. HealthDay ConsumerNews
Service.

South Carolina Nurses Association (2008). ANA launches safe staffing activities: What are the
ANA safe staffing principles? The South Carolina Nurse, 15(3), 1-2.