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A state Superior Court judge sided with the California Nurses Association Friday in ruling that the governor overstepped his authority in issuing an emergency order that delayed by three years a further reduction in the number of nurses to patients on the state’s medical/surgical wards.
“This is probably the single biggest setback for this governor since he’s been in office,” says Chuck Idelson, a spokesman for the nurses union.
The fight is likely to continue. Both the hospital industry and the state vow to appeal the court decision.
“We don’t have a problem with the ratios conceptually if we had the workforce to meet them,” says Jan Emerson, spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, who says 4,000 additional nurses would be needed statewide if the judge’s ruling is not overturned.
In the meantime, the nurses continue a barrage of criticism and street theater: In the weeks before the ruling, the nurses duked it out with the governor in a series of public protests, including hiring airplanes to trail anti-Schwarzenegger banners at the Oscars and taking out advertisements criticizing the governor as too tied to big business.
Today, they’re expected to protest the governor as he attends a political fundraiser in Washington.
Trouble started in November when the governor issued the emergency order delaying by three years a reduction in nurse ratios from one-nurse-to-six-patients to one-to-five, saying there are not enough nurses to hire to meet those ratios.
Schwarzenegger further angered nurses in December when a group of them interrupted his remarks at a women’s conference, and he called them “special interests” who “don’t like me in Sacramento because I kick their butt.”
The ratio reduction was to have gone into effect in January, a year after the initial law mandating ratios began.
His order left intact existing ratios of one nurse to six patients on medical wards, one to four in pediatric wards and one to two in intensive care.
The nurse staffing law was passed by California lawmakers who cited research showing that patients get better care when more nurses are on duty. It is the first state to mandate staffing levels throughout hospitals, although other states set ratios in intensive care units.
The nurses union says the ratios will improve patient care and nurses’ satisfaction with their jobs.
“Gov. Schwarzenegger fought the law — and the patients won,” says Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the union, in a written statement.
But the hospital industry has questioned whether the staffing levels will improve care and say many facilities are already struggling to hire enough nurses despite California having some of the highest nursing salaries in the nation, with new nurses making $60,000 a year or more.
Emerson, at the hospital association, says the nurses union has its eye on a bigger prize: expanding membership beyond California to nurses in other states.
“If they’re going to follow the governor all over the country, that’s not caring about patients in California,” she says.
