Editorial: Plan needed to address nurse crisis

Monday, Jan. 12, 2004 | 8:44 a.m.

Nevada has the worst nursing shortage in the nation. According to the latest available statistics from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, there are 520 employed nurses for every 100,000 residents in Nevada. The national average is 782 nurses per 100,000. Last week a legislative subcommittee studying health-care staffing in the state took up the issue. Because a nursing shortage this severe can affect patient care, committee members discussed a remedy now at work in California -- mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios.

California passed its law in 1999 and it took effect Jan. 1 of this year. One reason California took action was because of its ranking as the state with the second-worst nursing shortage -- just 544 nurses per 100,000 people. The state now requires every wing of its public and private hospitals to have a certain number of nurses per patient. The more intense the wing -- trauma, emergency, birthing -- the more nurses that must be assigned. Hospital executives in California hate the law because it increases costs, but stressed-out nurses are loving it. The California Nurses Association called it "a quantum leap forward for public health and safety."

We hope that Nevada hospitals, with the state's help, can resolve this problem before a similar law needs to be passed here. Assemblyman Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City, a physician, put his finger on the problem of a ratio law. "A single solution doesn't exist. We have to do a lot of things," he said. The 2003 Legislature began the work by approving a plan to double the number of nursing students in state universities and colleges. The Nevada Hospital Association cooperated by agreeing to donate $560,000 for equipment costs at the schools.

We would like to see more of this type of cooperation from Nevada hospitals. Their representatives testified against a ratio law at the subcommittee meeting, citing costs and the absence of any studies that prove ratios benefit patient care. Fair enough. But it's not good enough for them to just oppose a possible solution. They must come up with a workable plan of their own, one that would end the severity of Nevada's nursing shortage within a reasonable period of time.

The Legislature, which has a right to set standards for the state's health care, must be firm in demanding this plan. Having the worst nursing shortage in the country is not acceptable. Hospitals should be told that if improvement doesn't come from them -- it will come from the Legislature.