[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 12596]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                           THE NURSING CRISIS

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                          HON. DANNY K. DAVIS

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 28, 2001

  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call your 
attention to a growing crisis--the shortage of nurses in health care 
facilities across the Nation. Nurses are an absolutely essential 
component of our health care system--no piece of medical equipment will 
ever replace the around-the-clock surveillance provided by our Nation's 
nurses. There is simply no substitute for the element of humanity that 
nurses bring to medicine. Therefore, I find it extremely alarming that 
one in five nurses plans to quit the profession within five years due 
to unsatisfactory working conditions. By the year 2008, the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics projects that we will need 450,000 additional 
registered nurses in order to meet present demand. This projection 
neglects the fact that around that same time, 78 million baby boomers 
will start becoming eligible for Medicare.
  How did we end up in this situation? Imagine for a moment, if you 
will, that you are one of the millions of young people across the 
country trying to decide upon a career. Suppose nursing is a profession 
that sincerely interests you. Would you still be interested upon 
discovering that nurses can expect to work nights, weekends, and 
holidays? Would you still be interested after learning that nurses 
routinely work 16-hour shifts or longer, and can be forced under threat 
of dismissal to work mandatory overtime? Would you still be interested 
after realizing that nurses receive lower salaries, less vacation, and 
less retirement benefits than their classmates who chose other 
professions? Would you still be interested after finding out that, with 
the advent of managed care, nurses now have to spend almost as much 
time scrambling to fill out paperwork as they do caring for patients? 
Would you still be interested when you learn that the very real 
possibility exists that you may be the only hospital staff member 
available to supervise the well-being of an entire floor of critically-
ill patients? It doesn't take a great deal of insight to realize that 
no matter how passionate your intentions, the disadvantages of the 
nursing profession have become increasingly prohibitive.
  Yet, as bad as the nursing crisis is for nurses, its worst 
consequences will be felt by patients, Last year, an investigative 
report by the Chicago Tribune revealed that since 1995, at least 1,720 
hospital patients have been accidentally killed, and 9,854 others 
injured as a result of the actions of registered nurses across the 
country. Interestingly enough, instead of attacking the Tribune report, 
nurses applauded it because it proved to the American public what they 
had known for a long time--our nation's nursing corps is being 
stretched too thin, in part due to reckless pennypinching by managed 
care companies, and in part due to government underfunding of 
hospitals.
  How bad is the crisis? In the mid-90's, short-sighted budget cuts, 
both by the government and by managed care companies, forced many 
hospitals that were staffed entirely by registered nurses to rely on 
lesser-trained practical nurses and nurse aides instead. Nurse aides, 
many of whom are not required to have high school diplomas, now 
constitute over one-third of nursing staffs in many hospitals. In my 
hometown of Chicago, the situation is so dire that housekeeping staff 
hired to clean rooms have been pressed into duty as aides to dispense 
medicine. Hospitals now routinely order nurses to care for 15 patients 
or more at a time, almost double the recommended patient load. 
Overworked nurses are being forced to juggle more tasks than any single 
person can be expected to handle, and are being asked to do procedures 
that they haven't been adequately trained for.
  Our nurses have reached the end of their rope. To quote Kim 
Cloninger, a registered nurse from Illinois: ``I wake up every day and 
hope I don't kill someone today. Every day I pray: God protect me. Let 
me make it out of there with my patients alive.'' Or perhaps more 
tellingly, Tricia Hunter, executive director of the California branch 
of the American Nurses Association states: ``I don't know a nurse who 
would leave anyone they love in a hospital alone.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is the face of nursing today. The nursing 
profession needs our help. As a profession, nurses have a rich history 
of doing whatever it takes to provide adequate patient care. Nurses 
generally don't make a big fuss over working conditions. The fact that 
they are tells me that something is seriously wrong with our health 
care system today. Therefore, I support legislation that enacts 
upwardly adjustable nurse staffing ratios as a condition of 
participation in Medicare and Medicaid, and I support legislation 
banning mandatory overtime. I also support the Patients' Bill of Rights 
introduced by Mr. McCain, Mr. Edwards, and Mr. Kennedy in the Senate, 
and by Mr. Ganske and Mr. Dingell in the House because it includes a 
provision that protects health care professionals from retaliation when 
they speak out for their patients. Lastly, I support the Nurse 
Reinvestment Act, H.R. 1436, because it addresses the need to attract 
more people into the nursing profession. I support all of these 
measures because if we don't act to solve our current nursing crisis, 
we will all pay the price at some point down the line.

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