Minnesota senator wants to protect nurses from retaliation by hospital administration
Oct. 11—ROCHESTER — An influential state senator on health care policy plans to introduce legislation next year that would protect nurses from retaliation by hospital employers if they should refuse an assignment that they believe would put a patient in harm's way.
DFL State Sen. Erin Murphy of St. Paul said the proposal is aimed at repairing a health care system signaling signs of stress amid a rising number of documented adverse health events.
"The problem is that too many nurses are leaving and leaving quickly," Murphy said in an interview in the lobby of the Kahler Grand Hotel on Monday. "We have more registered nurses in Minnesota than we have had in a long time. But they're not working in our hospitals. So what can we do to make sure they're coming back and working in our hospitals where we need them."
The provision would be similar to one that was part of
legislation called "Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act,"
of which Murphy was the Senate's chief author and that
ended up being torpedoed in the end by Mayo Clinic Health System's objections.
In the last session, KNABA had been approved in conference committee and was on the verge of passage when Mayo, at the 11th hour, objected to KNABA and another health care bill and threatened to reconsider billions in planned construction projects in Rochester. Mayo's insistence on an exemption from the bill and the objection of other hospital administrators led to KNABA's demise.
Murphy said an anti-retaliation bill protecting nurses, which she plans to introduce next year, is aimed at improving a state health care system that has seen an exodus of registered nurses due to stressful working conditions and burnout.
Murphy said she is not looking to revive another component of KNABA, which was designed to give nurses a seat at the table and a say in staffing levels that Mayo objected to.
Mayo Clinic spokesperson Kristy Jacobson said clinic officials have not yet seen the proposed draft legislation.
"Our focus has been and will remain on finding solutions that support, train and grow our healthcare workforce to better meet current and future needs of patients," she said in an email.
Murphy, a clinical nurse and former DFL gubernatorial candidate, said she has not yet sounded out Mayo Clinic leaders about their views on such anti-retaliation legislation. She said she was not wedded to specific language yet, seeing the idea of such a bill as a "jumping off point heading into the next session."
"One of the provisions that was in Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act was about prohibiting employers from retaliating against their nurses and their staff if they're working in the full practice of the scope of their nurse's license," she said. "A nurse's license says that we should refuse an assignment if it's going to put a patient in harm's way."
Minnesota nurse leaders say surveys have shown that by giving nurses more say in their work environment, it would incentivize nurses to remain at their job or return to nursing.
Murphy said the state was recently presented with evidence of fractures in the health care system when, for the second year in a row, an
elevated number of adverse health events
in Minnesota hospitals was recorded in 2022. Such accidents involve giving a patient the wrong medicine, operating on the wrong limb, leaving an instrument in a patient's body post-surgery and death.
Falls and pressure ulcers were the two most reported events, accounting for 64% of reportable events, Murphy said. Those two indicators were particularly concerning because "it usually indicates the absence of adequate nursing," she said.
"There's a shortage of nurses working in hospitals. Almost every hospital in the state is reporting that they are short nurses," Murphy said. "That is a staffing crisis."
Murphy was in Rochester to receive the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Social Justice Award from the Minnesota Nurses Association on Sunday evening.
