Guest Author - Ruby Joiner

Nurses around the country are fighting to include safe staffing language and bans on mandatory overtime in contracts. Research shows that safe staffing levels in hospitals and other healthcare facilities are crucial to quality patient care. The Vermont contract includes nurse-to-patient staffing ratios that are the nation's most patient safety.

Highlights of the tentative contract agreement are:

---Safe nurse-to-patient ratios, which will greatly improve the time that nurses have to spend with each patient.There will be one nurse for every five patients in the medical/surgical unit, one nurse for every critical care and one for each patient in the operating room.

---A ban on mandatory overtime, which will ensure that nurses are not forced to work grueling back-to-back shifts.

---An end to mandatory floating, a practice in which nurses are ordered to leave their unit to work elsewhere, regardless of whether they have the appropriate training.

---An economic package that will improve the hospital's ability to recruit and retain qualified nurses in a time when a shotage of qualified nurses has created a highly competitive job market across the country.