Today’s LA Times’ cover story on what’s attracting RNs to California features interviews with our Union President, Leo Perez, and his co-worker at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, Lynsey Kwon. Reporter Don Lee’s story examines the difference between working as a nurse in CA, versus nursing in other states.

The advantage of nurse-to-patient ratios is key, say Perez and Kwon.

From the article: “In critical care units and labor and delivery, state law requires at least one nurse forevery two patients. It’s one nurse per four patients in pediatrics, and one-to-five for thegeneral medical surgical floor.

‘What a difference the mandate makes,” said Lynsey Kwon, a registered nurse who recently moved to California.'”

“‘I don’t know if I could work in an acute-care setting without nursing ratios,’ Perez said, noting that nurses at his daughter’s hospital in Arizona sometimes care for seven patients at a time. “She has horror stories.’”

Read more at the Los Angeles Times: Much-needed nurses are flocking to California — for some of the same reasons others are fleeing