Hospital workers with SEIU Healthcare Illinois rally on Thursday, April 11, 2024, in the rotunda of the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield to demand the Illinois legislature take action on a hospital staffing crisis across the state. SPRINGFIELD — Health care workers and advocates held a rally inside the Illinois State Capitol on Thursday to promote legislation aimed at enhancing the safety of hospital employees amid staffing shortages at some medical facilities.
One bill would require hospitals to employ and schedule enough workers “to provide quality patient care and ensure patient safety.” Hospitals would have to annually publish staffing statistics to assess whether they’re at proper levels. The measure would also require the Illinois Department of Public Health to produce an annual report based on staffing disclosures.
“You shouldn’t have to worry about being burdened because you’re doing jobs that you shouldn’t be doing, you’re doing jobs that two or three people should be doing and that you’re violating the training that you were given,” state Sen. Christopher Belt, a Democrat from Swansea, a sponsor of one of the bills, said at the rally.
“Whether it’s in a nursing home, a hospital, wherever, staffing matters,” said Collins, also a bill sponsor. “I can tell you about the experience of having that wear and tear on your body and … the wear and tear on your mental because you’re left with the unthinkable but you still show up every single day and put in the work and yet we have to legislate something that is fundamental.”
Citing statistics from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, SEIU Healthcare said that hospitals in the U.S. in 2019 recorded 221,400 work-related injuries and illnesses, a rate of 5.5 work-related injuries for every 100 full-time employees “and almost twice the rate for private industry as a whole.”
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