Medical Malpractice Attorney in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Understaffing

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Understaffing has been a prevalent issue for many, many years. It depends on units. Certain units, for example intensive care units, the issue today may not be understaffing, but quality staffing. They may have underqualified people overseeing the sickest patients in the hospital. You know, if you talk to nurses in most hospital environments, say – they’ll tell you the understaffing issue is terrifying, for them when they are on duty responsible for the patients, as well as under many other circumstances where the volume of patients that may come through may not be able to be addressed because the way the hospital has it set up, it’s very focused on overhead, and costs, and profit and not necessarily focused on patient safety.

So a lot of the minimums that exist in terms of standards for the amount of patients per nurse, a lot of those have often been drawn up by organizations that are more focused on allowing hospitals to be profitable than organizations and that base it on the data to make sure that patients have good outcomes.

Philadelphia, PA personal injury lawyer Eric H. Weitz talks about the struggles of understaffing in the medical industry, specifically hospitals.

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