AHA blog responds to Medical Care Journal article on nurse staffing

The AHA published a blog June 26 responding to a Medical Care Journal article that paints a bleak picture of the future of health care, claiming hospitals intend to replace registered nurses with lower-paid and less qualified staff, which the authors assert would lead to poorer quality care and skyrocketing costs. 
 
“Let’s be clear — the care model imagined by the authors is disconnected from the reality on the ground,” writes Robyn Begley, D.N.P., RN, AHA’s chief nursing officer and CEO of AHA’s American Organization for Nursing Leadership. “Nursing and hospital leaders are working every day with their teams to build modern, multi-disciplinary models focused on maximizing the quality and safety of care and on bolstering and supporting nurses and the entire health care workforce. Rather than assessing these actual changes in the field, the authors use highly dubious assumptions about the work happening in hospitals to deliver the innovations that modern healthcare requires, and patients want.” READ MORE