Safety in Numbers bookcover

Safety in Numbers

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Description

Legally mandated nurse-to-patient ratios are one of the most controversial topics in health care today. Ratio advocates believe that minimum staffing levels are essential for quality care, better working conditions, and higher rates of RN recruitment and retention that would alleviate the current global nursing shortage. Opponents claim that ratios will unfairly burden hospital budgets, while reducing management flexibility in addressing patient needs.

Safety in Numbers is the first book to examine the arguments for and against ratios. Utilizing survey data, interviews, and other original research, Suzanne Gordon, John Buchanan, and Tanya Bretherton weigh the cost, benefits, and effectiveness of ratios in California and the state of Victoria in Australia, the two places where RN staffing levels have been mandated the longest. They show how hospital cost cutting and layoffs in the 1990s created larger workloads and deteriorating conditions for both nurses and their patients--leading nursing organizations to embrace staffing level regulation. The authors provide an in-depth account of the difficult but ultimately successful campaigns waged by nurses and their allies to win mandated ratios. Safety in Numbers then reports on how nurses, hospital administrators, and health care policymakers handled ratio implementation.

With at least fourteen states in the United States and several other countries now considering staffing level regulation, this balanced assessment of the impact of ratios on patient outcomes and RN job performance and satisfaction could not be timelier. The authors' history and analysis of the nurse-to-patient ratios debate will be welcomed as an invaluable guide for patient advocates, nurses, health care managers, public officials, and anyone else concerned about the quality of patient care in the United States and the world.

Product Details

PublisherILR Press
Publish DateApril 15, 2008
Pages288
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconHardback
EAN/UPC9780801446832
Dimensions9.1 X 6.5 X 0.9 inches | 1.1 pounds

About the Author

Suzanne Gordon is an award-winning journalist. She has written, edited, or co-authored twenty books, including First Do No Harm, Beyond the Checklist, Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines, and Caregiving: Readings in Knowledge, Practice, Ethics, and Politics. She is an adjunct professor in the school of nursing at McGill University. Gordon is a health-care commentator on Public Radio International's Marketplace and a popular lecturer on nursing and health care. Gordon has been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, American Prospect, Atlantic Monthly, Harpers Magazine. She has been a radio and TV commentator for CBS Radio and NPR's Marketplace. She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Suzanne Gordon is an award-winning journalist. She is Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing and Assistant Adjunct Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing. She is the author of Life Support and Nursing against the Odds, the coauthor of From Silence to Voice, and the coeditor of The Complexities of Care, all from Cornell. John Buchanan is Director of the Workplace Research Centre at the University of Sydney. He is the coauthor of Fragmented Futures. Tanya Bretherton is a senior research fellow at the Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney, and editor of Human Resource in Practice.

Reviews

Very timely. The authors offer a thorough review of nurse-patient ratios, looking specifically at California and Victoria, Australia (both are places that have mandated low nurse-to-patient ratios)... showing how nurses, hospital administrators, and health care policy makers have embraced and implemented low, safe ratios. It is crucial reading for health care professionals and administrators, upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, researchers, and general readers--anyone who is a patient, may someday be a patient, or knows a patient.

-- "Choice"

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