Research Paper on:
Mandated Nurse-to-Patient Ratios

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
decade, the trend towards mandated ratios in nurse staffing plans proliferated and, as of 2009, thirteen states, including the District of Columbia, have passed legislation that either mandates nurse-to-patient ratios  or has created legal statues that mandate the creation of written staffing plans or the development of an approach that provides a combination of these two approaches. However, from the  onset, the topic of mandated nursing staff ratios has been controversial and hotly debated. The following examination of this issue offers an overview before offering conclusions. In the early  1990s, the need to decrease expenditures in regards to health care financing coupled with the emergence of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and other forms of managed care resulted in considerable  hospital restructuring. One of the main strategies implemented by hospital administrations at that time was to decrease the number of licensed nurses on staff and increase the number of unlicensed  caregivers. Simultaneously, the requirements of managed care resulted in increased patient acuity levels and decreased hospital lengths of stay (Tevington, 2011). Nurses, based on their own experience and also on  the results of nursing research, argued that increasing the number of registered nurses (RNs) on staff would result in an increased number of positive patient outcomes and this movement led  to the passage of the California law (Tevington, 2011). Currently, Connecticut, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Texas and Washington have joined with California in mandating the adoption of  staffing plans, while in Florida, Vermont and Maine, legislation proposing a combination of staffing plans and nurse-patient staffing ratios has been introduced. The action of the New York State legislature  succeeded in shifting the focus from mandated ratios to staffing plans, and this strategy provides the advantage that is allows the input of direct-care nurses in regards to providing ratio