Maine’s nurses cannot comfortably do their jobs because of a chronic staffing crisis. Juggling too much work and too many patients, they urgently need support. The way to intervene, however, is not by mandating nurse-to-patient ratios that hospitals will almost invariably fail to meet.
“The groundswell of support for nurse-to-patient ratios among bedside nurses makes it painfully clear that radical change is overdue in our state’s units and wards,” this editorial board wrote back in June of last year, when the proposal was first circulating in Augusta. “If we could dependably legislate against staffing shortages, however, it could conceivably also be done for teachers, bus drivers, public defenders and more.”
A drive for better staffing is a no-brainer. The sticking point with the proposal moving through the Legislature, however, is the same now as it was then: that applying and enforcing the ratios risks driving hospital departments out of operation. Warnings that the move could have the effect of further threatening patient care need to be taken seriously. Already, hospitals’ poor financial positions have a pernicious effect. Patients should not have to be exposed to risk in an attempt to force change.
Where else can effort to improve working conditions be channeled? Legislators interested in helping nurses should take it upon themselves to come up with effective means of supporting violence prevention, going above and beyond existing federal requirements. They should make Maine the most attractive state in the U.S. in which to train, qualify and work as a nurse, using financial support of schools (nursing programs are notoriously costly to run), student debt forgiveness and complementary incentives. They should explore means of transferring hospitals’ ballooning traveling nurse budgets to staff nurse pay.
The ongoing nursing challenge is an unacceptable symptom of the failure of our health care system, where costs and services too often don’t match and relentless, commercially driven belt-tightening has made hospitals very difficult workplaces. Recruitment is best achieved by supporting prospective recruits. Would that it were any simpler than that.
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