Too few nurses for California to meet new hospital staffing law

Main Category: Nursing / Midwifery
Article Date: 28 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PDT


California's hospitals are on the front lines, delivering care 24 hours a day to every person who needs our help, whether or not they can afford to pay.

New state regulations, however, are seriously testing the ability of hospitals across California to provide this care. Although the requirement for hospitals to base their staffing on specific nurse-to-patient ratios was signed into law in 1999, the California Department of Health Services (DHS) didn't finalize the numeric ratios or the regulations needed to implement them until September 2003.

These new regulations, which took effect this past January, are now forcing hospitals throughout the state to close beds, deny patient transfers, increase ambulance diversions and require longer waits in the emergency room.

The major reason for hospitals' inability to meet the nurse-to-patient ratio regulations: a dire shortage of nurses and DHS' interpretation that the ratios must be met "at all times."

The California Nurses Association would have the public believe that there is no nursing shortage. The CNA, a labor union for nurses, even goes on to claim that California has 30,000 more nurses than we had just three years ago, yet this is not supported by the facts.

California ranks 49th among states in the number of nurses per capita, according to 2001 data by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only Nevada has fewer. The state Economic Development Department says California will be short more than 30,000 RNs by 2006.

By 2010, the department adds, the shortage will more than triple -- to more than 109,000 RNs.

The reasons for the nursing shortage are multiple - California's booming population, an aging workforce and overcrowded and underfunded nursing education programs are the chief culprits. According to the Board of Registered Nursing (BRN), California graduates about 5,000 nursing students a year, but we are losing almost that number in retirements.

Nearly 70 percent of the nursing students in California are educated at the state's community colleges, but because of state budget cuts, the nursing programs at these institutions have waiting lists of up to three years. Adding to the educational woes for nursing students -- no UC campus offers an undergraduate degree in nursing although five of the nine have medical schools and teaching hospitals.

Read full article at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/23/EDGB95OGRI1.DTL

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