Thomas A. Sharon, RN, MPH
Thomas A. Sharon, RN, MPH, author of Protect Yourself in the Hospital: Insider Tips for Avoiding Hospital Mistakes for Yourself or Someone You Love (Contemporary Books/McGraw-Hill).
Ever ring the call buzzer in the hospital to get a nurse’s attention? And then waited? And then waited some more? The consequences of waiting a while for attention in the hospital can prove serious indeed, even life-threatening.
It’s no news that there has been a serious nursing shortage in the US for some time. The dilemma, however, is that as baby boomers reach their 60s and beyond, the demand for nurses grows. Fewer new nurses are entering the profession, and the average age of RNs is climbing. This is not exactly reassuring at a time when more than 100,000 people a year die in hospitals from preventable accidents and complications from medical mistakes, many of which are due to substandard nursing care.
It’s frustrating to consider and it might seem there is little a person can do individually about a national shortage of nursing… except hope for good health. But there are, in fact, measures that patients and family members can take to make sure their loved ones in the hospital get the high-quality nursing care they need. I spoke with Thomas A. Sharon, RN, MPH, author of Protect Yourself in the Hospital: Insider Tips for Avoiding Hospital Mistakes for Yourself or Someone You Love (Contemporary Books/McGraw-Hill). Noting that the quality of nursing is just as important to health outcomes as physician care, he had plenty of advice on how to shield yourself and your loved ones during a hospital stay.
In a recent survey, one in three people reported experiencing personally or having a family member who had been the victim of a medical error. It’s likely this high figure is related to the nursing shortage, since nurses play a critical role in preventing medical errors. Their role in hospital safety cannot be overestimated, stresses Sharon. Research backs up his observation. Investigators at the University of Pennsylvania found that people who undergo surgical procedures in hospitals with fewer nurses — i.e., high patient-to-nurse ratios — faced a 31% increased risk of dying. For every additional patient in a nurse’s workload, the risk of death in surgical patients jumped by 7%.
Sharon says he’s seen this personally in his 30-year career as a nurse: “When one nurse is assigned to care for 20 patients, some will have to wait and this delay has an impact on health.” He says that in his experience, falls are one of the most common — and most tragic — results of higher-than-optimal patient-to-nurse ratios. Whether bedrails are in place or not, when ill or elderly patients need to use the bathroom or accidentally soil themselves, they’ll do nearly anything to climb out of bed if their call for assistance isn’t responded to within a few minutes. “It’s a tragedy waiting to happen,” he warns.
It’s not that nurses don’t want to help, stresses Sharon. Given the current shortage, many nurses are simply overwhelmed by what’s being required of them. He offered this advice on how to work cooperatively with nurses to get the best possible care during a hospital stay: