Protecting Milwaukee Nursing Home Patients Requires Proper Staffing

Inadequate staffing may lead to nurse burnout, medical mistakes

On behalf of Milwaukee personal injury attorney Ric Domnitz of Domnitz & Domnitz, S.C. posted in Nursing Home Abuse on Tuesday, July 31, 2012.

A recent study of nurses in hospitals shows that inadequate staffing can cause them to burn out, leading to medical mistakes. The same could easily be said for understaffed nursing homes.

Data from the study, which appears in the American Journal of Infection Control, indicates that cutting an institution’s medical staff can ultimately lead to more errors and patient deaths.

As hospitals have nursing staffs, at least one state has responded to such budget issues by mandating a minimum nurse-to-patient ratio. This may be beneficial not only because patients get more attention, but because the working environment is different.

The lead author of the study says that staffing plays a huge part in that. If an employee feels there is a lack of support and teamwork, stress can build to the point that the staff member feels detached. In an office environment, that might result in mere indifference. In the medical industry, that can have extremely serious consequences.

In typical medical facilities in one state, the proportion of burned out nurses is about 30 percent. If that could be reduced to 10 percent, it could prevent over 4,000 cases of the most common infections, and also save the state about $41 million.

When family members bring someone to a hospital or nursing home, they have the right to hope and expect that the medical staff that greets them is friendly, competent and sharp. Clearly, cutting a budget has more consequences than meets the eye.

Source: Philly.com, “Penn study examines link between nurse burnout, care,” Don Sapatkin, July 30, 2012

If you need legal representation, contact a Milwaukee personal injury attorney with Domnitz & Domnitz, S.C. for a free consultation.