Abstract
Purpose: To test the feasibility of using patient acuity indicators as proxy measures for the AACN Synergy Model for Patient Care patient characteristics.
Design and Methods: Secondary data analysis of a convenience sample of 481 patient ratings from adult and pediatric critical and noncritical medical surgical patients.
Findings: Combining dichotomous patient acuity indicators into multilevel categorical variables allowed evaluation of linear relationships between acuity and patient characteristics indicators. Of the 8 patient characteristics, only participation in care exhibited meaningful correlations with the acuity indicators. According to these findings, acuity indicators should not be substituted for the Synergy Model patient characteristics.