Join the research for Safe Staffing

SEIU nurses have to make the staffing law work.
You can help by joining our staffing ratios research team.


After helping pass the law, SEIU nurses through the Nurse Alliance began to work on implementing it, including providing our professional recommendations to California Department of Health Services on the implementation regulations. But, there is more work to be done. Our initial reports from the field indicate that there are a number of problems with the staffing ratio law that may need to be addressed, including:

 Basic adherence to the staffing ratios;

 Non-nurse support staff being cut, forcing nurses to pick up the slack, thus undermining the law’s intent;

Problems with patient classification systems, resulting in inadequate staffing levels.

Recent research by the California Nursing Outcomes Coalition also supports the need to look more in depth at how and if the law has been implemented.

Join our research project — and the campaign to make staffing ratios work for patients.

Designed by a pre-eminent scholar in the field, the SEIU nurse staffing ratio study will be the first nurse-led, field-based, comprehensive study of California’s staffing ratios.

The Nurse Alliance members will be collecting data about their shifts for 7 sequential days at 4-month intervals beginning in June 2008. The data will be used to evaluate and improve individual work sites and the law.

To find out more about how you can join the nurse staffing ratio study, please read the brochure by clicking here.