Safe Staffing Ratios

Large group of nurses hold signs "Safe Staffing Saves Lives"

NNU’s proposal for minimum, mandated, nurse-to-patient staffing ratios protect our patients’ right to nursing care. We know that every patient deserves a single standard of high-quality care. Safe staffing ratios, coupled with nurses’ powerful voice of advocacy secured in collective bargaining, protect our patients from complications that arise from missed care such as medical errors, health care disparities, infections, and so much more. Read more »

Safe Staffing Saves Lives

Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act fact sheet

Read our fact sheet on legislation that would protect patients and improve health care by setting mandated, minimum, registered nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

Group of nurses inside hospital hold sign "Staff Up for Sage Care"

RN Staffing Ratios: A Necessary Solution to the Patient Safety Crisis in U.S. Hospitals

NNU stands ready to help you bring ratios to your state. Read our booklet to learn more.

About safe staffing ratios

Group of nurses inside hospital hold signs "Safe Staffing Saves Lives"

Protecting Our Front Line: Ending the Shortage of Good Nursing Jobs and the Industry-created Unsafe Staffing Crisis

In this report, National Nurses United describes how the hospital industry has driven registered nurses from the bedside.

Graphic of recommended nurse to patient ratios by unit

The science of ratios

Decades of studies have shown that more nurses equate to lives saved and fewer complications. Researchers have been focusing on what exactly is the mediating link between increasing RN staffing and improved outcomes.

Learning from the California experience

In 1999, the registered nurses of the California Nurses Association successfully sponsored and lobbied the California Legislature to pass A.B. 394, the historic bill that made minimum, specific numerical staffing ratios the golden standard in the Golden State.

What does the California ratios law actually require?

The CNA-sponsored safe staffing law, has multiple provisions designed to remedy unsafe staffing in acute-care facilities.

RN Staffing Ratios Whitepaper

Learn more by reading NNU's staffing ratios whitepaper.

We need your help to get the Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act passed to improve working conditions for nurses and to protect patients. Take action by urging your elected officials to support this critical legislation.

Videos

Safe staffing ratios protect patients and nurses

Safe RN ratios have been proven to improve the quality of care and nurse recruitment and retention in California hospitals.

Join our fight for safe staffing

We need a national nurse-to-patient staffing ratios law now more than ever.

Join our Safe Staffing Rapid Response Team to be part of a dedicated team of online volunteers. Members of the team will get first notice about developments and news regarding safe staffing  and will be ready to take action both online and in their communities.

Articles

Veterans Affairs nurses have been speaking out about patient safety and the nurse staffing crisis throughout the VA, holding pickets, rallies, and other actions.
Nearly 2,000 registered nurses in Texas and Kansas at three Ascension hospitals held historic one-day strikes in June to protest management’s resistance to bargain in good faith with RNs for union contracts that would help correct the endemic staffing crisis.
Registered nurses with National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United joined labor allies on Oct. 3 at a legislative hearing to rebuke industry efforts to reduce staffing in health care systems and nursing homes.

Press releases

Nurses at the Joseph Maxwell Cleland Atlanta VA Medical Center will hold a protest to call attention to their serious patient safety concerns, including ongoing short-staffing, poor security measures to prevent workplace violence, and a lack of leadership accountability.
Nurses at UChicago Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, will hold a one-day strike on March 14 to protest the administration’s refusal to address RNs’ demand to improve safe staffing at their facility.
On February 27, nurses from University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Health Mission Bay will hold a rally to shed light on worsening conditions inside the medical center that the university has continuously refused to address.
Registered nurses at UChicago Medicine will hold a strike vote on Tuesday, February 20, 2024, which would authorize the bargaining team to call a strike if management does not address staffing concerns which lead to patient safety issues.