A Review Of Increased Nurse Staffing And Patient Care

Inadequate nurse staffing has become a major issue when it comes to patient safety. Having a unit function with not enough staff not only puts patients at risk for adverse events, it also puts the nurse at risk for potential errors. In the following paragraphs, information will be provided on how changing the number of nurses on the unit, will improve patient care. Literature will be discussed and will provide evidence that changing nurse-patient ratios not only improves the quality of care the patient receives, it also decreases the chances of errors. A change theory will also be discussed and will explain how it helps implement change in a hospital setting and how it will be used to implement change. Finally information on how the inter-professional

Nurse staffing and how it relates to the quality of patient care has been an important issue in the field of nursing for quite some time. This topic has been particularly popular recently due to the fact that there is an increasing age among those who make up the Baby Boomer era in the United States. There will be a greater need for nurse staffing to increase to help accommodate the higher demand of care. Although nursing is “the top occupation in terms of job growth,” there are still nursing shortages among various hospitals across America today. The shortage in nurses heavily weighs on the overall quality of care that each individual patient receives during their hospital stay (Rosseter, 2014).

The purpose of this article is to discuss appropriate nurse staffing and staffing ratios and its impact on patient care. Although the issue is just not about numbers as we discuss staffing we begin to see how complex the issue has become over the years. Many factors can affect appropriate nurse staffing ratios. As we investigate nurse staffing ratios we can see the importance of finding the right mix and number of nurses to provide quality care for patients.

One can wonder if there is any correlation between patient-nurse ratio and it’s effect on patient safety. In the research conducted by Jack Needleman and his associates (2002), they examined the relationship between amount of care provided by the nurse and compared it to patient outcome. The result showed that the increase amount of time a nurse is able to spend with the patient better the quality of care is. The data for this research was collected from seven hundred and ninety-nine hospitals across eleven states. This covered both medical and surgical patients that were discharged and the data was evaluated the relationship between the time provide to the patients by the nurses and patients’ outcome. As research showed,

Mandatory nurse-patient ratios have been a controversial topic facing nurses for decades. Nurses, patients, physicians, nursing organizations, researchers, hospitals, federal government, and state governments have opposing views in regard to mandatory nurse-patient ratios. Those that support the idea of mandatory nurse-patient ratios believe that there would be an improvement in quality of patient care, decreased nursing shortages, increased job satisfaction, decreased client hospitalization, and increased nurse recruitment (Pamela Tevington, 2012). Groups that oppose mandatory nurse-patient ratios believe that mandatory staffing laws ignore factors such as the level of care a patient requires from a nurse, treatments, length of hospitalization, improvements and differences in technology, the expense of an increased nursing staff, and nurse experience and education (Tevington, 2012).

Current nurse-to-patient ratios is a topic that has constant focus on today’s patient outcomes and safety. There have be many studies and there continues to be studies done on how a higher nurse to patient ratio effects not only patient and nurse safety and patient outcomes once they leave the hospital, but also patient mortality rates as well. When a nurse has been assigned more of a patient load than they can safely handle, whether it be because of a large patient volume or patient acuity, patients suffer and the quality of care declines. With the higher ratio,

For over a decade researchers have been performing studies examining the effects patient-to-nurse ratios have on adverse outcomes, mortality rates, and failure-to-rescue rates of patients and on job dissatisfaction and burnout experiences of nurses. Aiken, Sloane, Sochalski, and Silber (2002) performed a study which showed that each additional patient per nurse increased patient mortality within 30 days of admission by 7% and increased failure-to-rescue by 7% as well. This same study also showed that each additional patient per nurse resulted in a 23% increase in nurse burnout and a 15% increase in job dissatisfaction. Additionally, Rafferty et al. (2007) performed a study in which the results showed that patients in hospitals with higher patient-to-nurse ratios had a 26% higher mortality rate and nurses were twice as likely to have job dissatisfaction and experience burnout. Blegen, Goode, Spetz, Vaughn, and Park (2011) performed a study where results showed that more staffing hours for nurses resulted in lower rates of congestive heart failure morality, infection, and prolonged hospital stays. The same study also showed that increased nursing care from registered nurses resulted in lower infection and failure to rescue rates and fewer cases of sepsis.

Primarily, it is crucial for health care organizations to focus on ensuring safe and quality patient care, as well as improved job satisfaction by enforcing an optimal and adequate nurse-to-patient ratio and creating innovative and long-term strategies through a collaborative effort. In order to ensure the safety of patients and nurses, state-mandated safe-staffing ratios are necessary. Adequate nurse staffing is key to patient care and nurse retention, while inadequate staffing puts patients at risk and drives nurses from their profession. As baby boomers age and the demand for health care services grows, staffing problems will only intensify. Consequently, safe-staffing ratios have become such an ever-pressing concern. In 2004, California became the first state to implement minimum nurse-to-patient staffing ratios, designed to improve patient care and nurse retention. Subsequent studies show that California’s program measurably improved patient care and nurse retention.

Stanton, M. R. (2004, March). Hospital Nurse Staffing and Quality of Care. Research in Action. Rockville, MD, USA: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Currently, 6% of hospitals in the United States hold Magnet status (Lowell General Hospital, n.d.). Being a Magnet hospital is an accreditation awarded by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (Lowell General Hospital, n.d.). Such recognition is given to hospitals that aim to focus on quality-patient care provided by nurses (Lowell General Hospital, n.d.). This status is earned and achieved after extensive review, and is good for four years before they are required to meet 35 different areas of focus again (Lowell General Hospital, n.d.). Trinkoff et al. (2010) review the working conditions of hospitals to determine whether Magnet status improves nursing working conditions. The authors of this article come from different areas of expertise as they hold nursing degrees, PhD degrees, ScD degrees, and many others with an educational background in statistics, epidemiology, and nursing. However, the authors fail to study the patient outcomes between Magnet and non-Magnet hospitals and to see if Magnet status has an impact on patient outcomes. They fail to look at the entire picture, as their primary focus is on the working conditions of nurses, and not the patients.

Patients want and expect to receive high quality care. Nurses want to provide the best care possible to their patients and like everybody else; want a pleasing job environment. Hospitals, on the other hand, are expected to provide a safe environment to patients, have enough nursing staff and remain profitable (Keller, Dulle, Kwiecinski, Altimier & Owens, 2013). The ultimate goal is to improve quality of care and patient safety across the United States; therefore, all the different interests of these major stakeholders should be taken into

In recent years, the healthcare industry has seen a significant decline in the quality of patient care it provides. This has been the result of reduced staffing levels, overworked nurses, and an extremely high nurse to patient ratio. The importance of nurse staffing in hospital settings is an issue of great controversy. Too much staff results in costs that are too great for the facility to bear, but too little staffing results in patient care that is greatly hindered. Moreover, the shaky economy has led to widespread budget cuts; this, combined with the financial pressures associated with Medicare and private insurance companies have forced facilities to make due with fewer

The broad research problem leading to this study is the belief that nursing shortage in facilities leads to patient safety issues. The review of available literature on this topic shows strong evidence that lower nurse staffing levels in hospitals are associated with worse patient outcomes. Some of these outcomes include very high patient to nurse ratio, fatigue for nurses leading to costly medical mistakes, social environment, nursing staff attrition from the most affected facilities. The study specifically attempts to find a way to understand how nurse

In this volume, the Institute of Medicine explains a series of research on how the healthcare system throughout Florida has change and impacted the quality care of patients and nurses. There are fundamentals conclusions about the evolving role of nurses in hospitals and presents recommendations about staffing, decisions, nursing training, measurement of quality, reimbursement, and other areas. I would like to focus on Chapter 5, Staffing and Quality Care in Hospitals, and Chapter 6, Relationships among Nursing Staff, Management, and Quality of Care. Even though the resource is a bit outdated, many of the basic issues still underlie when it comes to demands and quality in healthcare. For example, RN have expressed concerns that hospitals

The primary goal of the research conducted in this study was to identify a relationship between nursing staffing levels and patient outcomes. Researchers conducted this study over a course of 12 months at two hospitals in England, and included the inpatient patient population on both low acuity and critical care units. This retrospective study, extracted data from patients admitted to the hospitals from the calendar dates of January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2009. However, the data extracted had its limitations that was dependent upon accurate clinical coding in ICD-10 format. Data collected was nursing specific and did not take into considering ancillary staffing ratios and physician participation. Regression models used showed the nurse staffing