Nurse Staffing and Patient and Financial Outcomes
Unruh L. Nurse staffing and patient, nurse, and financial outcomes. AJN. 2008;108(1):62-71.
Despite years of substantial evidence linking nurse staffing and workload to nurse satisfaction and patient and financial outcomes, this research has gone largely ignored. As a result, nurses continue to work in under-staffed, over-worked conditions that threaten the quality of patient care and safety. The increased dissatisfaction and turnover of nurses can also negatively impact the hospital's financial performance.
A recent analysis of published research underscores the importance of these studies and factors that have stood in the way of standardized evidence-based practices to address these issues.
"It's difficult to identify specific nurse-patient ratios that would be considered adequate under all conditions because staffing and workload are part of a complex matrix of factors," said Lynn Unruh, RN, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Health Professions, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Fla., and author of the article. "Adequate nurse-patient ratios must factor in the characteristics of the patient, nurse, and work environment; a ratio that's sufficient in one unit might not be in another. This is because nurse workload involves the number and acuity of patients cared for, unit design, resources available, skill mix, and other factors. Hospitals need an evidence-based, standardized measure of workload in which the effects of all known contributing factors are considered."