Gordon, S., Buchanan, J. & Bretherton, T. (2008). Safety in numbers: Nurse-patient ratios and the future of health care (pp. 1-2). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. This book provides a comprehensive overview of statutory mandatory ratios and their effectiveness in the localities where they have been enacted. It considers the pro-ratio arguments and the anti-ratio arguments, discusses the events that led to the enactment of this legislation, and discusses the findings and research used to evaluate the ratio legislation. The strengths of this source are that it is comprehensive and credible (it was published by an academic publisher). One of the weaknesses of this source is that the book is very long and some subtopics are not as well indexed as I would have liked. Hodge, MB, Romano, PS, Harvey, D., Samuels, SJ, Olson, VA, Sauvé, M., & Kravitz, RK (2004). Characteristics and staffing levels of licensed caregivers in California acute care hospital units [electronic version]. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 34(3), 125-133. This article is a comprehensive overview of staffing in hospital units. He used a survey to examine unit staffing characteristics – not just the ratio, but also the experience and education level of nurses. It evaluated several different categories of hospital facilities: public and private, academic medical centers and HMO-affiliated medical centers, and cities and rural areas. This is a good source because it shows what certain staffing levels were before the status quo ratio legislation passed in California. Its main limitation as a source is that it does not provide information on patient outcomes. DeVandry, S. and Cooper, J. (2009). Mandate... middle of document... there are so many details in the data that it can be difficult to get a clear picture of what staffing models would “look like” in practice. Griffiths, P. (2009). Staffing Levels and Patient Outcomes [Electronic version]. Nursing Management, 16(6), 22-23. This article is skeptical of mandatory nursing ratios and discusses some outside factors that may bias the other studies I intend to cite. The strengths of this article are that it comes from a peer-reviewed journal and is written by a recognized expert, making it a credible source. Rather than simply supporting or opposing mandatory maximum ratios, this introduces the idea that other studies of ratios may have overlooked some important considerations. The main drawback of this source is that it is a short article and does not go into much detail. I may have to end up using other sources to supplement the ideas he offers.