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Nurses and union leaders urge limits on nurse assignments; committee hears data on patient harm and staffing shortages
Summary
Nurses, union leaders and health researchers pressed the Joint Committee on Public Health to advance legislation (H.2448, S.1522) directing the Department of Public Health to set maximum patient assignments per registered nurse, citing survey data and multiple frontline accounts of unsafe staffing and patient harm.
Nurses, nursing association leaders and frontline clinicians urged the committee to report favorably on H.2448 and S.1522, legislation that would direct the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to set maximum patient assignments per registered nurse in hospitals.
Katie Murphy, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association and a critical care nurse, said research shows patient outcomes fall when nurses care for too many patients: "Each additional patient assigned to a nurse above safe level increases the risk of mortality by 7 percent," she testified, and added that understaffing is driving nurses out of…
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