Sunday, March 16, 2025 | 2 a.m.
“I left bedside nursing as a result of nearly on a regular basis, I watched sufferers die or grow to be disabled, and questioned if their struggling might have been prevented,” mentioned Katie Dimaya, a 24-year-old Filipina nurse. After two years at Dawn Hospital in Las Vegas, the younger nurse cited understaffing, discrimination and dire working situations as the first causes of her departure from the well being care business. She is one instance of what seems to be a grim sample affecting sufferers and nurses throughout Nevada.
In distinction, Katie’s dad and mom have labored as registered nurses in Nevada for nearly a mixed 50 years. Her mom, Angie, a labor and supply nurse of 24 years at St. Rose Sienna Hospital, works on the solely hospital system within the Las Vegas Valley with union-supported and protocol-mandated secure staffing ratios.
Staffing ratios are the variety of sufferers assigned to every nurse throughout a shift. These ratios be sure that the variety of sufferers assigned to every well being care skilled permits for the right ranges of assets and care.
Not like many different states, Nevada has no uniform, mandated, secure staffing ratios. Which means that a bedside nurse, who’s safely in a position to maintain 4 sufferers per shift as advisable by Nationwide Nurses United, will be assigned greater than double that variety of sufferers. Angie explains: “It’s unsafe for a nurse to have eight sufferers. Issues get missed and other people die.”
She’s proper. Analysis from the Nationwide Institutes of Well being means that for every extra affected person past the optimum ratio, the chance of preventable dying, longer hospital stays and affected person dissatisfaction enhance. Sustaining secure staffing ratios considerably improves the standard of affected person care by “decreasing medical errors, decreasing mortality charges, decreasing affected person prices via avoiding readmissions, and improved affected person well being outcomes,” whereas additionally stopping nurse burnout.
Nevada ranks forty ninth within the nation in nurses per capita and the nursing scarcity has overtaxed frontline nurses, resulting in excessive charges of burnout and mass resignations. Each county within the state is now experiencing a scarcity of medical professionals, significantly nurses.
Angelica Mateo, a former Las Vegas-based Filipino nurse, has left the state fully as a consequence of unsafe staffing. She shares, “If Nevada had secure staffing ratios, I’d come again. I need to come again house, simply not on the expense of affected person security and my well being.” Much like Angelica, “43% of newly licensed nurses who work in hospitals go away their jobs inside three years.”
There has by no means been a bit of state laws to handle the safety and retention of the state’s nurses via staffing, till now.
State Sen. Rochelle Nguyen has launched Senate Invoice 182, which might require secure staffing ratios for nurses and nursing assistants to be applied in Nevada hospitals. As well as, the invoice establishes technical staffing committees and repair staffing committees to enhance working situations for all hospital workers. The laws mirrors comparable actions for secure staffing throughout the nation, together with Oregon, Pennsylvania, Maine, Hawaii, Georgia, New Jersey, Illinois and others.
Present legislation permits hospitals to set normal care ratios, which regularly power a number of extra sufferers for nurses. Jody Domineck, a pediatric nurse with SEIU 1107, says, “I maintain the kids of Las Vegas and our whole state. I do know that my time I spend with the sufferers makes the distinction. I additionally know the heartbreak of attempting to maintain extra sufferers than I bodily can. … I’ve needed to go away a crying mom within the hallway as a result of I had to make sure the security of different sufferers. I’ve sat in my automotive on the finish of the night time feeling like I didn’t do sufficient as a result of there wasn’t sufficient time or sufficient of me, irrespective of how environment friendly I used to be or how effectively I managed my time.”
Secure staffing ratios power hospitals to stop understaffing and precisely schedule the present nursing workforce to maintain Nevadans. Present your assist for secure staffing and the nurses who serve sufferers daily. You could simply save a life.
Caren Yap is a licensed nursing assistant, former legislative staffer and Vegas-raised coverage advocate and organizer for civic engagement, labor and the wellbeing of Nevadans.
