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 »

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.

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.

About safe staffing ratios

Graphic of recommended nurse to patient ratios by unit

Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act

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 signs "Safe Staffing Saves Lives"

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.

Press releases

Registered nurses at UCSD Health Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla, Calif., will hold a rally on Wednesday, Sept. 27 to demand an end to UC management’s unsafe practice of placing emergency room patients in hallways and areas that are not properly equipped or staffed. At times, there are as many as 75 patients who do not have a bed.
Nurses say that, as Ascension management builds a new tower for women’s services, the company is failing to safely staff the existing labor and delivery unit and neonatal intensive care unit.
Registered nurses at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital in St. Louis, Mo., will hold a strike for 24 hours from Sept. 25 to Sept. 26 to protest the administration’s refusal to address RNs’ deep concerns about patient care, safe staffing, and workplace violence.
RNs at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) will hold a public rally on Tuesday, Sept. 26 to demand that UCSF address critical and persistent patient care and workplace safety issues.