During this legislative session, we've been working on a groundbreaking proposal aimed a strengthening existing law and ensuring health facilities give healthcare professionals the power to create a safe working environment. Any chance of passing this raised bill relies on letting our lawmakers know what is happening inside Connecticut's hospitals. With the end of the session fast approaching, we're calling on all of our members to put pressure on our state's lawmakers to act quickly and pass this bill.

If you or someone you know has been a patient recently, and short staffing impacted your care, our lawmakers need to hear from you.

If passed and signed into law, An Act Concerning Adequate and Safe Health Care Staffing will:

• establish local, nurse-approved patient limits by requiring staffing plans to be voted on by a majority of the facility's staffing committee, which will be made up of 55% beside nurses;
• empower the Department of Public Health to hold hospital administrators accountable for implementing hospital staffing plans;
• protect health professionals' ability to exercise their ethical responsibility to object to unsafe assignments;
• prohibit hospitals from forcing nurses to work more than 12 hours a day, 48 hours a week;
• strengthen the prohibition on mandatory overtime while allowing voluntary overtime for health professionals; &
• Increase transparency of hospital staffing plans to staff, patients, and the public.

Now is the time for all of us to stand together and share how nurses and health professionals are being overworked with increased patient loads, raising health and safety risks for all.

Click here for a message outline for the raised bill's "safe patient limits" proposals.

Our state legislators need to hear from you about why safe patient limits are so important, not just for the safety of Connecticut's caregivers but for the safety of all patients.