May 6-12 is National Nurses Week. It's held the same dates each year in honor of the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. To mark the week, the AFT has prepared a sample op-ed or letter to the editor for submission to local newspapers:

This week is National Nurses Week, an annual recognition of all the hard work nurses do. But flowers and other gifts, while appreciated, won't give nurses what they really want and need.

Nurses need relief from the overwhelming stress they face as a result of being forced to care for too many patients at one time. And they need the help of community members to achieve this relief.

Patients, too, have a direct stake in safe staffing levels. Study after study shows that inadequate nurse staffing leads to more medical errors, more complications and even a higher rate of avoidable patient deaths. In contrast, when there are a sufficient number of nurses during each shift, patients receive more time and attention, hospital stays are shorter, patient outcomes are better, and costs are lower for both the hospital and the patient.

Unfortunately, hospitals and health facilities too often put short-term profits ahead of the evidence and continue to assign nurses dangerously high patient loads. For example, a recent survey found that medical-surgical nurses care for an average of eight patients at a time, even though these nurses felt they could safely care for only five. This is assembly-line patient care, not quality care.

Inadequate staffing is exacerbating the nation's already severe nurse shortage. Numerous surveys show that high numbers of nurses have left or are thinking about leaving their profession because of the unrelenting stress of their jobs. These nurses give up because their hopes are dashed: They enter nursing to help the sick and injured, but find their crushing workload makes it nearly impossible to do the job the way they were trained.

Mandated nurse-to-patient ratios, set at safe and reasonable levels, would help keep nurses in the profession, improve patient care and save lives. While this can happen through either federal or state legislation—or through negotiated union contracts—it is much more likely to happen if hospitals and lawmakers hear from community members that safe staffing is essential to high-quality patient care.

So, this week, if you want to honor nurses in your community, forget the flowers. Instead, send a letter to your elected officials or local hospital urging them to make safe staffing a top priority.

May 5, 2008