Please support minimum nurse staffing legislation

I urge you to support the Nurse Staffing Standards for Patient Safety and Quality Care Act (H.R. 2530 and S.1113), which will create mandatory minimum nurse-to-patient ratios and whistleblower protections. Practicing nurses know these measures are critical to address the crisis conditions that they face every day in our nation’s hospitals. If there is anything we should have learned from the Covid pandemic, it is that our nurses are a vital national resource. And two decades of research has shown that adequate nurse staffing saves lives. Yet understaffed conditions at many hospitals today are endangering patients and nurses alike. In a recent survey (https://bit.ly/3QMWjgp), 80% of responding healthcare workers (70% of whom were nurses) reported feeling burned out, 70% felt abused by the staffing levels at their hospitals, and 50% felt their institutions had betrayed them. We have a shortage of nursing—and of nurses willing to endure current conditions. Globally, we need four times as many nurses as we now have. We cannot allow hospitals to drive them out of a profession they love because their working conditions are untenable. Many nurses are desperate. Female nurses die by suicide at a rate twice that of the general population (https://bit.ly/3umRYJw). One who did in 2023, sadly, was Ohio nurse Tristin Kate Smith. Her “Letter to My Abuser,” which was discovered after her death and has since gone viral, described a healthcare system that had “taken [her] heart and slowly crushed the goodness it had.” She said: “I cannot stay in this abusive relationship. Each day, you ask me to do more with less. You beat me to the point that my body and mind are black, bruised, and bleeding out. If I stay, I will lose my sanity - and possibly my life - forever.” Please support H.R. 2530 and S.1113. The nation’s health—and the wellbeing of its nurses—are at stake. Thank you.