The Safe Patient Care Act
The Safe Patient Care Act has been introduced for the 2023-2024 legislative session! This bipartisan package, which has dozens of cosponsors, will save lives and help keep skilled nurses at the bedside by:
Read the press release here! Sign the petition to add your voice to the movement for patients over profits. Check out the news coverage Safe Patient Care Act state House sponsors (right to left) Reps. Betsy Coffia, Stephanie Young and Carrie Rheingans hold the bills on the House floor before introducing them. The bills have bipartisan support and dozens of cosponsors. In the Senate, the sponsors are Sen. Sylvia Santana, Sen. Stephanie Chang and Sen. Jeremy Moss.
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Join the movement to put PATIENTS, not profits, first.
The Michigan Nurses Association is calling for a set of Michigan laws, called the Safe Patient Care Act, to protect all our loved ones by limiting the number of patients a nurse can be assigned. The law would also limit mandatory RN overtime that compromises patients' care and require hospitals to disclose their actual RN-to-patient ratios.
Lori Batzloff, RN and MNA member, shares her firsthand experience in urging legislators to pass the Safe Patient Care Act. "We need a law that protects every patient at every hospital on every shift."
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Believe it or not, there is no law that limits the number of hospital patients a Registered Nurse can be assigned to care for at one time. There's also no law that limits the hours a nurse can be forced to work.
This puts patients in danger; when Registered Nurses are stretched too thin or forced to work past the point of exhaustion, they can't give each patient the professional care they need. Years of reliable research have established the link between understaffed nursing shifts and increased patient infections, falls, medication errors and even preventable deaths. We all deserve better. |