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Nurses' Working Conditions and the Nursing Shortage
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To the Editor: Although Drs Berliner and Ginzberg1 acknowledged that increasing the supply of RNs is a short-term solution, they do not offer long-term interventions. No matter how many new nurses are supplied, until the issues of salary, respect, and ethical principles of patient safety are adequately addressed, the hospital nursing shortage will continue. Nurses simply will not stay in the current system.
Both the cause and the solution to the hospital nursing shortage lies in the hands of hospitals. As the authors indicate, 500 000 RNs currently are not working in clinical nursing. Nursing budgets are erroneously perceived as high expense without revenue-generating potential and therefore often the first cut. Administrators impose unsafe nurse-to-patient ratios to improve hospital revenue. Unlike their physician colleagues, nurses have no economic incentive to take on higher patient loads. Furthermore, studies have found that favorable nurse-to-patient ratios decrease patient morbidity, mortality, and medical errors.2-3 It . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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