Facts About Safe Staffing

Nurses in California passed a safe staffing law more than a decade ago that protects patients and respects nursing practice.

The results are impressive: shorter hospital stays, lower re-admission rates, greater patient satisfaction, fewer complications and deaths. As life-saving interventions go, safe staffing is not only humane, it is cost effective.

Hospitals that routinely staff with 1:8 nurse-to-patient ratios experience five additional deaths per 1,000 patients than do those staffing at a 1:4 ratio.

The odds of patient death increase by 7 percent for each additional patient a nurse must take on at one time.

Safe staffing reduces turnover in hospitals. Replacing a burned-out RN costs between $82,000 and $88,000 according to The Journal of Nursing Administration.