For a guy who likes to talk a big game about supporting the middle class and advocating for the job force, you sure threw nurses under the bus with your letter to the Health and Human Services asking to wipe out our staffing ratios. Nurses have been working the last 18 months with crushingly high-acuity patients during the pandemic, and slashing our hard-fought patient-to-nurse ratios will only lead to more burnout, more nurses leaving the bedside, and an exacerbation of the nursing shortage. Maybe you should get out into your community and talk to nurses (not hospital administrators) and find out what they think of your suggestion. You would be hard-pressed to find any nurse in California that thinks that upping our ratios is a good idea. Many of these local nurses likely voted for you—you could try your hand at supporting them by advocating for them with things that may actually help our frontline workers—like bonus pay, loan forgiveness, subsidies to hospitals for crisis travel nurses, and fighting to keep the ratios in place. If you can’t do these things, maybe just admit that you’re working for the highest bidder in campaign contributions.
Grace Miller
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Autumn Arts Annual 2021.
Thanks to the author for bringing this to the public’s attention. Mr. Cunningham continues to support causes and actions which are detrimental to our community. Recently, he has defended businesses that defied county health mandates, which he described as “frivolous.” He has also encouraged parents and children to defy mask mandates at youth sports. hopefully someone will run against him next time who really cares about the welfare of his constituents.
Confronting reality is usually a thankless task, and likely to generate indignant howls. If we already have a nursing shortage, how is increasing the number of nurses required going to help? Where will they come from? That is the sort of “paper solution” beloved by government, with their love of flinging down edicts that others must implement. We need to increase the number of nurses available.