WA Voters Support Hospital Safe Staffing Standards

By an overwhelming 3-1 margin, WA voters support safe staffing standards to address the statewide hospital staffing crisis

SEATTLE – New public polling shows Washington voters overwhelmingly support creating safe staffing standards for healthcare workers in order to address the hospital staffing crisis, including a majority among every political party.

The poll, conducted by GBAO Strategies, found that 76% of Washington voters support establishing safe staffing standards like those currently before the state Legislature in Senate Bill 5236, which will protect any one nurse or healthcare worker from being assigned too many patients at a time and ensure hospitals hire enough staff to ensure patient and worker safety.

This support is an improvement from January 2022 polling, in which 67% of voters supported safe staffing standards.

“The fact that voter support for safe staffing standards has only grown shows that Washington voters clearly think it’s past time we step up to protect healthcare workers,” said David Keepnews, executive director of the Washington State Nurses Association. “They understand that healthcare workers have put themselves at risk to protect us, despite being burned out and beyond their breaking points, and that we need to enact policy that requires hospital executives to finally hire enough staff to ensure both worker and patient safety.”

The statewide hospital staffing crisis is a result of years of under-staffing leading to massive burnout for healthcare workers. This burnout has led to a shortage of nurses and other healthcare workers as they reach their breaking points and leave the field. Healthcare workers have said that by ensuring manageable and safe working conditions, safe staffing standards will retain and attract both veteran and new workers and help solve the staffing crisis.

“Voters understand that safe staffing standards are the solution actual bedside healthcare workers are calling for,” said Faye Guenther, UFCW 3000 president. “For years healthcare workers have told hospital executives what they need to make their jobs manageable and improve safety, but have been ignored. Now they’re asking legislators to act, and they have voters’ support.”

The polling also shows Washington voters continue to hold nearly universally favorable views (85%) of healthcare workers, and in an open-ended question about the best reasons to support the proposal, many respondents said healthcare workers will be able to provide better care for their patients under safe staffing standards, and healthcare will improve for everyone.

“Last year healthcare workers asked state lawmakers to step in and pass safe staffing standards, but we were ultimately unsuccessful,” said Jane Hopkins, RN, president of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. “Since then the staffing crisis has only gotten worse, as more and more healthcare workers leave the field due to burnout. Now healthcare workers are back in Olympia, urging legislators to step in and ensure safety for healthcare workers and patients.”

SB 5236 would also close loopholes in existing meal and rest break laws that hospital executives have exploited to deny healthcare workers needed breaks, as well as provide for adequate enforcement against hospitals that don’t comply – which 79% of Washington voters support. 

Legislative testimony has mirrored this overwhelming support among voters – during the public hearing for SB 5236 in the Senate Labor & Commerce Committee, more than 2,055 Washington healthcare workers, patients, and patient advocacy organizations signed up in support – more than twice the number of hospital executives and managers who signed in in opposition.

SB 5236 is currently awaiting passage out of the Senate Labor & Commerce Committee.