California bypasses tough nurse care rules amid COVID surge

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Nerissa Black was already having a hard time tending to four COVID-19 patients who need constant heart monitoring. But because of staffing shortages affecting hospitals throughout California, her workload recently increased to six people infected with the coronavirus.

Black, a registered nurse at the telemetry cardiac unit of the Henry Mayo Hospital in Valencia, just north of Los Angeles, barely has time to take a break or eat a meal. But what really worries her is not having enough time to spend with each of her patients.

Black said she rarely has time to help patients brush their teeth or go to the bathroom because she must prioritize making sure they get the medicine they need and don’t develop bedsores.

“We have had more patients falling (in December) compared to last year because we don’t have enough staff to take care of everybody,” Black said.

Overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients in the nation's most populous state, Black and many other nurses already stretched thin are now caring for more patients than typically allowed under state law after the state began issuing waivers that allow hospitals to temporarily bypass a strict nurse-to-patient ratios law — a move they say is pushing them to the brink of burnout and affecting patient care.

California is the only state in the country to require by law specific number of nurses to patients in every hospital unit. It requires hospitals to provide one nurse for every two patients in intensive care and one nurse for every four patients in emergency rooms, for example. Those ratios, nurses say, have helped reduce errors and protect the safety of patients and nurses.

Nurses overwhelmed with patients because of the pandemic in other states are demanding law-mandated ratios. But so far, they have failed to get them. In Massachusetts,...