How much can one nurse take on while still providing the best possible care for his or her patients? Though the issue of safe nurse-to-patient ratios — the number of patients a nurse has under direct care — has been a hot button issue for the medical community for years. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, it elevated to an unprecedented level, nurses say. They say hospitals have hit, and at some times exceeded, capacity limits with patients carrying a highly communicable disease, testing the limits of nurses' abilities. As more and more nurses are facing burnout and difficulty in providing proper care as they are overwhelmed with far too many patients, workers, unions, legislators, allies and others have called on health systems to ensure that staffing ratios are a guarantee for the nursing community in the commonwealth.