slide 8

The speaker believes that implementing better patient-to-staff ratios nationwide is necessary. They suggest creating policies for each hospital to determine safe ratios. This would prevent staff from being overloaded. Additionally, these ratios save money for hospitals and patients. A safe ratio improves patient safety and outcomes, reduces turnover, and attracts more nurses to work in better environments. Conversely, poor work environments can discourage nurses from working hard. So, in conclusion, I think that better patient-to-staff ratios should be implemented nationwide. I think that we could make policies on it, each hospital having a policy on what the safe patient-to-staff ratios should be and will be. That way, if somebody gets in a bind, they can't ask you to do more than you already have. Also, these things save money, they save hospitals money and they save patients money. So, wasting money is never a good thing and a safe patient-to-staff ratio can help save that money. So, this is safer for patients and provides better outcomes in the long run. It also causes less turnover and more nurses will be willing to work with better work environments. The middle range theory that I provided earlier gives some examples on how these work environments can relate to nurses and make them work harder, but also, if the environments are worse, it can make them work less.