Too Many Patients Harmed or Dead Due to Understaffing

In conjunction with the beginning of National Nurses Week, a new study of registered nurses in Massachusetts released May 6 by the Massachusetts Nurses Association establishes that hospital administrators are assigning too many patients to registered nurses, resulting in significant harm and even death for patients. According to the survey, more than eight in 10 registered nurses report that the quality of patient care in Massachusetts hospitals is suffering because hospital administrators are requiring nurses to care for too many patients at once, and six in 10 RNs report that staffing decisions are driven by administrators’ desire for increased profits, with devastating results for their patients:

Some report highlights include:

• Alarmingly, one in four nurses (25 percent) report patient deaths directly attributable to having too many patients to care for at one time and the same number report they wouldn’t feel safe admitting their own family member to the unit on which they work
• 50 percent report injury and harm to patients due to understaffing
• 56 percent report readmission of patients due to unsafe patient assignments
• 61 percent report medication errors due to unsafe patient assignments
• 61 percent report complications for patients due to unsafe patient assignments
• 81 percent report RNs don’t have the time to educate patients and provide adequate discharge planning
• 86 percent report RNs don’t have the time to properly comfort and care for patients and families due to unsafe patient assignments

The release of this state-wide data on the impact of unsafe patient assignments for nurses on patient mortality follows a similar report in 2014, with this year’s results showing an increase in the rate of negative patient outcomes and a continued deterioration in the quality and safety of patient care in Massachusetts hospitals, particularly in the state’s community hospitals.

"These findings provide an indictment of our system of hospital care in Massachusetts and shine the light on the really dangerous situation for our patients who are being forced to share their nurse with too many other patients at one time, which is resulting in more of them suffering totally preventable complications, medical errors, costly readmissions and, yes, even death for lack of proper care, attention and monitoring from registered nurses," said Donna Kelly-Williams, RN, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association and a staff nurse on the maternity unit at Cambridge Health Alliance. "As the nation and many employers look to National Nurses Week to recognize the contributions of its nurses, in releasing these findings we nurses are pushing our own call button for help, in this case from the Legislature who has the opportunity to address this crisis by passing legislation to ensure safe patient assignments for nurses and ensure quality patient care."

Earlier this year, 85 Massachusetts legislators joined lead sponsors Sen. Marc Pacheco and state Rep. Denise Garlick as cosponsors to the Patient Safety Act, legislation filed by the Massachusetts Nurses Association that will dramatically improve patient safety by establishing a maximum limit on the number of patients assigned to a nurse at one time, while also requiring hospitals to adjust nurses’ patient assignments based on the specific needs of the patients.

This new survey ofMassachusetts nurses was commissioned by the Massachusetts Nurses Association and conducted between April 10 and 16 by Anderson Robbins Research, an independent research firm headquartered in Boston. The 2015 survey respondents were all nurses currently working in Massachusetts randomly selected from a complete file of the 92,000 nurses registered with the Massachusetts Board ofRegistration in Nursing. Fully 61 percent of the respondents have no affiliation with the MNA.