Continuing changes within the health care field have brought to the forefront a growing awareness and concern regarding the quality of health care being delivered today in the nation’s acute care hospitals. This report summarizes the state of acute care hospitals today, looks at how this environment influences the trends within nursing, examines how these [...]

A series of papers and reports have found that inadequate nurse staffing in hospitals across the country is compromising patient care. Most recently, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science found that low nurse staffing levels are one of the key causes contributing to 98,000 preventable deaths each year.1
As an organization representing [...]

Barack Obama has been a consistent champion of America’s nurses. As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama chaired the Senate Committee on Public Health and helped lead efforts to protect Illinois nurses and improve the quality of health care throughout Illinois. As a U.S. senator, Obama serves on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions [...]

THE HOSP ITAL IND USTR Y IN the United States is undergoing widespread reorganization that includes restructuring of the workforce. Surveys reveal that nurses now working in hospitals have serious concerns about the impact of such staffing changes on quality of care and the safety of patients.1 Media coverage of changes taking place in hospitals [...]

Adequate nurse staffing is critical to the delivery of quality patient care.1 Identifying and maintaining the appropriate number and mix of nursing staff is a problem experienced by nurses at every level in all settings. Regardless of organizational mission, tempering the realities of cost containment and cyclical nursing shortages with the priority of safe, quality [...]