A poll from the United Nurses and Allied Professionals organization shows that a majority of registered nurses working in Rhode Island hospitals believe that patient care is adversely impacted by unsafe staffing practices and compelling nurses to care for too many patients at one time, according to The Valley Breeze.
Here are six insights:
1. The poll was conducted over a seven-day period in December 2015 by Anderson Robbins Research and showed that only one-third of responding RNs felt they had time to give needed care and attention to patients and their families.
2. By a two-to-one margin, RNs are more likely to think that the quality of patient care in the state's hospitals has gotten worse than better in the past two years. Among those who think care is worse, understaffing is the main reason.
3. More than eight in 100 RNs believe that the quality of patient care is suffering due to over-assignment of patients, and more than six in 10 feel that they do not have enough time to provide patients with the necessary care.
4. More than half of RNs believe that the staffing situation has gotten worse over the past four years, and two-thirds say that staffing decisions are made based on hospital finances and profit margins rather than patient acuity and staff workloads.
5. One in 10 nurses reported awareness of a patient's death having resulted from unsafe staffing.
6. Both UNAP members and non-members overwhelmingly favor passing a law to establish a limit on the number of patients a nurse is assigned at one time. More than eight in 10 RNs agree that the proposed law will improve the quality of patient care.
