Petition for Safe Staffing in Vermont!
House Committee on Heath Care
Since before the pandemic, our health care workers have been asked to do more with less. Most worrisome is health care managers forcing nurses and health care workers to take on more patients than they can possibly care for, leading to increased mortality rates for patients and health care worker burnout and resignation.
It is time for our state to investigate the issue of safe staffing and make recommendations for safe staffing levels based on science -- not profits. Please sign this petition to urge the House Committee on Health Care to take H.103 off the wall and get to work on setting safe staff-to-patient ratios in our health care facilities. Also, please help spread the word! As Rutland Regional Medical Center nurse Myla Lindroos wrote, "That [one too many] patient could be someone you love."
Sponsored by
To:
House Committee on Heath Care
From:
[Your Name]
Dear Representatives of the Vermont House Committee on Healthcare,
We, the undersigned, are nurses in Vermont. On behalf of the undersigned nurses at Rutland Regional Medical Centerand all other nurses in Vermont, we urge you to support passage of House Bill 103 which would require the Department of Health to report on their staff-to-patient ratios in state facilities. We know from repeated studies that there are specific measurable safe ratios of patients to nurses in each specialty in which patients are cared for. Each patient added to a nurse’s burden of care causes an overall increase in mortality of 7% for all of that nurse’s patients. We know from experience that nurses are rarely overburdened by just a single patient, but often 2, 3, 4, or more. That means that patients might face a 28% increase in mortality. That patient could be someone you love.
We know that increased ratios cause poor patient outcomes, increase mortality, increase healthcare spending, fuel burn out and nurses leaving jobs, which forces hospitals to hire expensive travel nurses to take their positions, further incentivizing a drain on our healthcare system that we cannot afford. If we evaluate the need for safe nurse to patient ratios in our state facilities, then we will have the data to drive change that will ultimately save lives and money.
This bill is just a first step, but an extremely necessary one. There is frequent discussion of our nursing shortage, but we have four million nurses in this country. What we are short on are nurses who are willing to risk their morals and licenses by taking on more patients than they can possibly care for safely. We choose this profession because we are called to serve others, but the moral injury done to nurses as they struggle to meet the most basic needs of their patients is too much.
Nurses will continue to leave the job in droves, and we cannot meet the needs of this state and its inhabitants if it continues. We urge you to hold a hearing on HB103 and hear for yourselves. This bill will help us to take the first steps towards repairing our broken healthcare system so we can continue to care for our families, neighbors, and community.
Sincerely,
The undersigned supporters at Rutland Regional Medical Center