AFTER THEIR VICTORY, WHAT'S NEXT FOR CALIFORNIA NURSES?

AFTER THEIR VICTORY, WHAT’S NEXT FOR CALIFORNIA NURSES?

By Mike Kirchubel

California nurses and their patients should celebrate their ratio law victory quickly. If the past is any indication of the future, the hospital owner’s lobby (California Hospital Association) will soon have their high-priced lawyers looking for loop-holes and holding seminars on how to undermine the ratios. Look for another round of hospital executives and phony front groups writing op-ed pieces and letters trying to scare the public with threatened hospital closings, delayed surgeries, the nursing shortage (that they caused and that the ratios are rapidly curing), and hospital staff meetings to instill fear of job loss by pitting employees one against the other. I’m also sure that Governor Schwarzenegger, not yet used to being typecast as the “loser,” will put the full force of state agencies to task finding a cure for the ratios. The game is afoot.

So, after the victory pot-luck lunches, what should California nurses do? Sit and wait for the inevitable second shoe to drop? I say keep moving forward. It’s time to twist the blade.

Before the ratio law was enacted, California hospitals were supposed to staff their units in accordance with Title 22. This regulation mandates that each hospital have a patient classification system in place that will determine how many nurses are needed on each unit based upon the severity of the patients being treated there. However, a 1998 California Department of Health Services survey of 160 acute care hospitals found that 87% of our hospitals were out of compliance with this regulation. (And, you thought it was just YOUR hospital.) The resultant continual and severe statewide understaffing and the danger that posed to our patients was the motivation for the California Nurses Association to fight the hospital owner’s lobby and push for the ratio law.

With the ratio legislation now grabbing headlines, the Patient Classification System found in Title 22 of the California Code of Regulations has drifted into the background - But it still exists. What California nurses should do now is demand that the State enforce its regulations with fines and penalties for hospitals out of compliance.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, as California’s chief executive officer, has the ultimate responsibility for enforcing state laws. If he is not up to the task, I suggest every registered nurse, patient, friend or family member of a patient and any past or possible future patient in California contact their elected state representative and ask that they act now to ensure that every hospital has an accurate patient classification system in place for safe nurse staffing.

With the resurrection of Title 22, the governor and hospital owner’s lobby would be forced to battle, and win, on two fronts before they could again erode patient safety. All citizens have the right and moral obligation to demand that our laws apply equally to everyone – even to our governor and the most powerful lobbies. Spread the word and contact your representative today. Thank you.