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The nursing shortage and systemic understaffing is costing lives, and hospitals are partly to blame, writes Alexandra Robbins.
She cites a study finding that "for every 100 surgical patients who die in hospitals where nurses are assigned four patients, 131 would die if they were assigned eight," and a survey of nurses in which 25% of them said understaffing was "directly responsible for patient deaths".
But the "nationwide problem" is not just for a lack of trained professionals: "as the push for hospital profits has increased, important matters like personnel count, most notably nurses, have suffered". And nurses "are punished for speaking out" about understaffing.