Nurses Have a Bone to Pick on Staffing

Each time I see the television ad depicting nurses and physicians thanking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for relaxing nurse staffing levels at California hospitals, I am flabbergasted. I am a registered nurse and neither I nor my co-workers support relaxing nurse staffing levels.

In “Nurses Decry News TV Spot” (Dec. 7), Jan Emerson, spokeswoman for the California Healthcare Assn., said: “The labor unions have been fear-mongering. They’ve been telling the public that these changes are going to jeopardize patient care, and that’s absolutely a fallacy.”

Actually, studies show that nurses can make the difference between life and death. According to one study, across the nation, the understaffing of registered nurses could result in as many as 20,000 preventable deaths annually.

In addition to patient safety, improving the work environment of nurses by more stringent staffing ratios will contribute to alleviating the current and worsening nursing shortage.

Barbara Schwartz RN

Lakewood

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I first saw the California Healthcare Assn. ad thanking the governor for protecting patients’ ability to receive medical care while I was in the waiting room of County-USC’s urgent care. And then I saw it for a second time while I was there with many others waiting to have cuts stitched and breaks mended. I suppose the CHA didn’t imagine that folks would view it while waiting 10-plus hours for urgent care; does incredulity find a better expression?

All of us with loved ones without health insurance could not help but feel slapped in the face by this dubious ad.

As private hospitals make bundles, nurses are worked to the bone and the rest of us imagine how we might even thank Arnold if he actually did do something to make sure we all had humane medical treatment.

Jenna M. Loyd

Los Angeles

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It is disheartening to hear our governor refer to nurses protesting at the California Governor’s Conference on Women and Families as “special interests” (Dec. 8). One only needs to read the series in your newspaper about Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center to know the importance of adequate patient ratios for hospitals to provide adequate care.

Maria Shriver, in her plans to feature women in the state museum, should include the nurses who work day to day to take care of your family members when they are ill. They too serve this great state without recognition, yet continue to work in underserved areas providing patient advocacy within their own practice.

Deirdre Greaney

Apablasa RN

Sherman Oaks