It is not only safer, mandatory staffing that is needed in nursing, we need other staff members to be responsible for the work they are being paid to do. Hospitals enjoy saying, "the patient -care- techs work under your supervision, so it is the nurse's responsibility ultimately to make sure whatever is assigned to the tech is done". Old method of doing things that needs to stop. Here is the message you send to the tech, "I don't have to get my work done properly because at the end of the day the nurse is the one who leadership holds responsible for whatever that was not done". Hospital leadership also love to hold on to this thing about the nurse is ultimately responsible because what that does it allows them, whenever it pleases them, to be frequently short of tech knowing fully well that the tech's responsibility was never removed from the nurse thus to save money they short the unit of a tech (and they still the work done ) because the nurses will have to do it. Note, leadership always want the nurse to help the tech because the tech "has so much to do". So if leadership knows there is so much to do, then the solution would be is to hire more tech. In what other profession do we see this happening? Only in nursing. Doctors still expect the nurse to chase them for orders. Many hospitals accept this as the standard of care. Another added stress on the nurse. As mentioned, nurses often work for 12 hours shifts and get NO break because too often if you take a break, it is either the phone does not stop ringing (and don't believe the hype-leadership likes when you have your phone on your break because it all about patient satisfaction) or you have stay until 8 or 9 pm because the has fallen so behind. The nurse works 12 hours and only is allotted 30 mins break; someone in another profession works 8 hours and gets the same 30 minutes break. Remember, being a good nurse is generally very stressful. By the time you get out of the cafe line, you barely have time to swallow your food before that 30 mins expires. In general, nursing is a profession where a good nurse gives his or her all and generally destroy his or her health while helping patients to regain theirs. The financial compensation is much to be desired. That is why young nurses are not staying and rightly so. Additionally, nurses get no respect - not from leadership, patients and their families, co-workers, doctors and everyone thinks that the only person who is responsible for the patient is the nurse. When you think about that - that is a great responsibility that leaves the nurse stressed for her entire shift -12-13 hours and at the end of 2 weeks he or she still cannot live comfortably with the compensation. Nursing needs to take a long look at its culture and make some serious changes if we are going to attract and retain nurses- happy nurses-good nurses, nurses that enjoy coming to work-into the profession a whole lot of things need to change.

I'll give you another way to retain nurses make it mandatory that all personnel in supervisory positions take at least Business Management 101 and maybe a class in HR. They need to be taught that their job is not to feed their egos but reduce stressors to the technological core not introduce them so that we can churn out our services to the patient. I can't tell you how many times I've asked myself "Why'd you do that?" when a manager adds to the stress of an already "bursting at the seams" situation. At age 74 I've only been a nurse for 20 years prior to that I owned and operated a successful business and early on I enrolled in night school to find out how to run a business. Fortunately, I found I was intuitively handling my staff properly but in 20 years of Nursing, I've only met 2 managers who were competent and one of them had taken business management 101.