We’re building a historic movement for safe patient limits. Have you signed our updated petition calling for safe patient limits in hospitals and nursing homes yet?
In Pennsylvania hospitals: We need legislation to set safe patient limits in our hospitals, and nurses must be on the frontlines of determining those limits. Senate Bill 450 and House Bill 867 do exactly this.
We’ve won historic levels of support for these bills. In the last two weeks alone, we got our 74th and 75th co-sponsors of House Bill 867–Rep. Todd Stephens (R-HD151) and Rep. Gary Day (R-HD187), and our 23rd cosponsor of Senate Bill 450–Sen. Pam Iovino (D-SD37)!
In Pennsylvania nursing homes: Today PA law only requires 2.7 hours of direct care per resident per 24 hours. We need to raise that to 4.1 hours, as experts and caregivers have recommended for many years. We’re calling for this to happen through an adjustment in the existing regulations, which haven’t been updated in over a decade.
We also need to require Medicaid funding increases go directly to the bedside. Nursing homes must be able to hire more staff and ensure we can recruit and retain caregivers by increasing wages, providing affordable healthcare, and increasing training.
We’ve got a fight ahead of us from industry lobbyists and big healthcare companies, but we are just getting started and building our movement every day. You can help us grow the movement by sharing this post on social media or however else you can think of to ask people to sign on to our petition for safe patient limits at nursesofpa.org/petition, and get added to our updates and get connected with nurses in your area leading this movement.
You can also download a pdf of the petition to carry around in person and get people to sign in, then mail it to us when you’re ready!
As Shelbie Stromyer RN told Erie News Now during Nurses Week, “We’re not politicians. We’re just a bunch of nurses, but we’re learning how to do this. We’re getting nurses in politics.” We are one of the largest professions in PA and the most trusted profession, and together, we’re taking our patient advocacy from the bedside to the legislature.
Sign & share the petition to stand up for patients and nurses: nursesofpa.org/petition.
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