(FOX40.COM) — California nurses plan to push back against new state staffing standards in a march set for Wednesday in Sacramento.

The California Nurses Association, which represents more than 100,000 registered nurses across the state, will protest Jan. 21 near the Capitol. Beginning at noon, CNA members will march from Cesar Chavez Plaza to the California Health & Human Services Agency.

The march is a response to new rules proposed last month by the California Department of Public Health.

The proposal is an attempt to fulfill requirements of the state’s landmark 1999 law, which made California the first state to adopt staffing ratios in acute-care hospitals — an effort the union backed. But CNA said the new regulations are “riddled with major problems and loopholes that make the recommended ratios essentially worthless.”

In general hospitals, only registered nurses count toward staffing ratios. But the public health department’s new regulations would set a lower bar in acute psychiatric hospitals, the union said, allowing for licensed vocational nurses or psychiatric technicians to count toward those ratios.

“The new ratios for acute psychiatric hospitals can, should and must extend the standards from existing ratios for general acute care hospitals,” Sandy Reding, president of the California Nurses Association, said in a news release. “We fully support [registered nurse] ratios for acute psychiatric hospitals, and we want the nurses in those hospitals to have the same strong standards the rest of us do.”

The nurses union’s concerns also include what they describe as “workarounds” to the minimum staffing ratios, such as a new “RN on duty” role that could be responsible for as many as 24 patients at a time.

“There’s no reason for this besides creating loopholes for employers to evade safe staffing,” the union said in a news release.

The public health department’s push for new rules came in the wake of a San Francisco Chronicle report that showed the harms of understaffing in psychiatric hospitals.

The California Department of Public Health did not immediately respond to FOX40’s request for comment.

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