Medical errors blamed on nursing shortage

Thursday, Jan. 27, 2000 | 10:59 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A legislative committee was told Wednesday that patient care in hospitals is being jeopardized because of the lack of nurses.

Theresa Morrow, a Las Vegas nurse, testified that administrators and managers are being awarded bonuses to reduce the number of nurses on shift. She said national reports show that medical errors are increasing.

Newly graduated nurses are put to work immediately without proper training, Morrow told the Legislative Committee on Health. That prompted Sen. Bernice Mathews, D-Reno, to say a new graduate nurse should never be left alone.

Mathews, a former nurse, said the new employee should always have a mentor. And Assemblywoman Vivian Freeman, D-Reno, also a former nurse, said she is worried about the increasing number of errors being made, partly due to the long hours nurses now work.

But James Wadhams, spokesman for the Nevada Hospital Association, said a national shortage of nurses -- not the hospitals -- are to blame. He said a survey of 13 Nevada hospitals conducted this week showed there were 240 unfilled nursing positions. He said newspapers and the Internet are filled with ads seeking to attract nurses to Nevada hospitals.

"The single overriding issue is a severe shortage of nurses," Wadhams told the committee.

Assemblywoman Ellen Koivisto, D-Las Vegas, the committee chairwoman, told the groups they should "stop butting heads" and work together to solve the shortage.

Morrow, co-chairwoman of the health care oversight committee of the Nevada Service Employees Union, said that hospitals don't even follow their own standards for the number of nurses required. And if the manager can "squeeze" one less nurse per shift, he or she is financially rewarded, Morrow said.

Yolanda Crobarger, a nurse at Washoe Medical Center in Reno, said staffing levels have decreased, yet the patients have more serious illnesses or injury.

"Nurses are leaving the hospitals because of increased patient loads, increased responsibility and often times, unsafe working conditions, all of which lead to a sense of hopelessness," Crobarger said.

At the same time the health care meeting was under way, the legislative auditor released an examination of the Bureau of Licensure and Certification that showed the bureau has failed to investigate many of the complaints against hospitals and other health care facilities.

The auditors said the record system in the bureau is not up to date in many cases.

"Our analysis of the bureau's complaint database showed some complaint investigations may not have occurred," the auditors said. "We found approximately 100 complaints from 1995 and 530 complaints from 1998 that did not have investigation dates recorded in the database."