Nursing staffing ratio policy for the ICU department Assignment

Nursing staffing ratio policy for the ICU department - Assignment Example The policy was first implemented in the California legislature through the passage of the Bill 394. Stakeholders such as the Institute of Medicine, California Hospital Association, California Nurses Association and the Service Employees International Union combined efforts and contributed jointly to development and implementation of the nursing policy. These associations contributed significantly in the policy formation process to address a number of factors. Factors addressed comprised of inadequacy of nurses in hospitals, registration of nurses, poor results from nurses and poor patient care services (Tevington, 2011). Health care stakeholders believed that the policy would solve problems experienced in the healthcare sector. In addition, they believed the policy would increase desired patient outcomes, increase recruitment of nurses, decrease shortages of nurses and increase job satisfaction (Unruh, 2008). Currently, many legislatures in the world have adopted the nursing policy a nd others are still adopting the policy. Mandatory Nurse-Patient Ratios Policy was developed for several purposes. The nursing policy was developed in order to develop an appropriate and specific ratio of nurses to patients that would be adopted by hospital to ensure that there are adequate nurses. In addition, the policy focused on improving the patient results in hospital through employment of registered and licensed nurses in different units in hospitals (Tevington, 2011). The Mandatory Nurse-Patient Ratios Policy has a wide range of users and participants. According to Douglas (2010), users of the Mandatory Nurse-Patient Ratios Policy consist of patients, physicians, nurses, healthcare unions, medical researchers, nursing organizations and associations and state governments. The policy affects nurses, patients and hospitals directly and physicians, health unions, medical researchers and