"If you talk to any nurse, they will tell you they love their jobs," says Ann Converso, a 30-year registered nurse in Buffalo, N.Y., and a member of United American Nurses. "But many of them leave because of the working conditions–one nurse for 12 or 15 patients. You can’t work like that. You’re prohibited from giving quality care because you’re just doing tasks to keep up."

Half a million nurses from AFL-CIO unions have come together in an unprecedented effort for safe staffing standards. On national Nurse Day, May 6, AFL-CIO Nurses: A United Voice for Safe Staffing Now will kick off a campaign for federal and state legislation to set safe nurse staffing standards in hospitals.

More than 500 nurses, legislators and consumer advocates will rally at Capitol Hill, where they will discuss the need for safe staffing standards and release a national poll commissioned by the new AFL-CIO Nurses campaign on the public’s view of how the nursing crisis affects patients. During Nurse Week, May 6—12, nurses from AFL-CIO unions also will be planning meetings, rallies and lobbying visits to support safe staffing in cities and towns around the country.

Recent studies have shown that low nurse staffing levels in hospitals lead to thousands of preventable deaths and injuries. A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that when a hospital decreases a registered nurse’s patient load from eight patients to four, the risk that a surgical patient will die within 30 days is lowered by nearly one-third.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) reported the nurse shortage was a factor in 24 percent of the unanticipated events that resulted in death, injury or permanent loss of function between 1997 and 2002. In its report, Health Care at the Crossroads, JCAHO found the nurse staffing problem is a major factor in emergency room overcrowding, cancellation of elective surgeries, discontinuation of clinical services and the limited ability of the health system to respond to any mass casualty incident. In addition, 90 percent of nursing homes reported an insufficient number of nurses to provide even the most basic care, and some home health agencies are being forced to refuse new admissions.

To improve working conditions, nurses have lobbied state legislators, urging them to mandate safe staffing standards in hospitals and nursing homes. Nurses in California successfully pushed the state to adopt staffing ratios between nurses and patients–the first such measure in the nation. Union nurses working in hospitals in more than 20 states also have won contracts that include staffing ratios.