Sean Clarke

Abstract

Background: A growing body of research links working conditions, such as staffing levels and work environment characteristics, with safety for both patients and workers in health care settings, including sharps injuries in hospital staff nurses. Methods: Surveys of 11,516 staff nurses from 188 Pennsylvania general acute care hospitals in 1999 were analyzed. Hospital work environments, measured using the Practice Environment Scales of the Nursing Work Index-Revised, and staffing were tested as predictors of experiencing at least one sharps injury in the preceding year, both before and after controlling for nurse risk factors, use of safety-engineered devices, and hospital structural characteristics. Results: Nurses with less than 5 years of experience, perioperative nurses, and those performing routine venipuncture for blood draws were more likely to be injured. Nurses working in hospitals with the most favorable working environments were one-third less likely to be injured. Staffing levels were not associated with sharps injuries. Conclusions: Across a large state, nurses working in acute care hospitals with better practice environments had fewer sharps injuries. Work environment conditions and specialty- and setting-specific risk factors deserve continued attention in sharps injury research.

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Purpose: To assess the key variables used in research on nurse staffing and patient outcomes from the perspective of an international panel. Design: A Delphi survey (November 2005-February 2006) of a purposively-selected expert panel from 10 countries consisting of 24 researchers specializing in nurse staffing and quality of health care and 8 nurse administrators. Methods: Each participant was sent by e-mail an up-to-date review of all evidence related to 39 patient-outcome, 14 nurse-staffing and 31 background variables and asked to rate the importance/usefulness of each variable for research on nurse staffing and patient outcomes. In two subsequent rounds the group median, mode, frequencies, and earlier responses were sent to each respondent. Findings: Twenty-nine participants responded to the first round (90.6%), of whom 28 (87.5%) responded to the second round. The Delphi panel generated 7 patient-outcome, 2 nurse-staffing and 12 background variables in the first round, not well-investigated in previous research, to be added to the list. At the end of the second round the predefined level of consensus (85%) was reached for 32 patient outcomes, 10 nurse staffing measures and 29 background variables. The highest consensus levels regarding measure sensitivity to nurse staffing were found for nurse perceived quality of care, patient satisfaction and pain, and the lowest for renal failure, cardiac failure, and central nervous system complications. Nursing Hours per Patient Day received the highest consensus score as a valid measure of the number of nursing staff. As a skill mix variable the proportion of RNs to total nursing staff achieved the highest consensus level. Both age and comorbidities were rated as important background variables by all the respondents. Conclusions: These results provide a snapshot of the state of the science on nurse-staffing and patient-outcomes research as of 2005. The results portray an area of nursing science in evolution and an understanding of the connections between human resource issues and healthcare quality based on both empirical findings and opinion.

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"Making the business case for nursing" is common shorthand these days for efforts to untangle the inputs and outputs of nursing education and service and provide the data necessary for making responsible decisions about resource allocation. Given the challenges facing American health care, nurse leaders must shape the future of nursing services within their facilities, communicate with nonnurse health care leaders and policymakers about alternatives for securing sufficient nurses and other nursing personnel to meet patient needs, and propose and implement the best strategies and models for ensuring optimal nursing care. They must articulate the consequences of making and not making certain investments as clearly as possible to multiple stakeholders.

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Background: The research literature linking nurse staffing and outcomes has expanded radically at a time of profound changes in human resources and financial management in hospitals and health care systems. Findings: Reviews of more than 100 peer-reviewed studies as of mid-2007 support an association between lower nurse staffing levels and poorer patient outcomes in acute care settings. Research efforts are increasingly aimed at understanding which outcomes are affected and under what circumstances and at evaluating the impact of staffing from an economic point of view. Minimal staffing levels appear to be a necessary but insufficient condition for safety in acute care hospitals. Conclusions and Implications: In the face of a deepening nursing shortage, many facilities are likely to find that various aspects of staffing, such as coverage, licensure levels, and experience, are lower than those historically in place. Advance planning by staff and supervisors and careful monitoring of outcomes are needed to ensure patient safety. Health care managers and executives need to benchmark staffing levels and nursing-sensitive outcomes in their facilities, carefully analyze recruitment and retention issues, and develop short- and long-term strategies for averting and dealing with the shortfalls in numbers and skill mix of nursing personnel that they will likely face increasingly in the coming decades.

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Context: Despite growing evidence in the US, little evidence has been available to evaluate whether internationally, hospitals in which nurses care for fewer patients have better outcomes in terms of patient survival and nurse retention. Objectives: To examine the effects of hospital-wide nurse staffing levels (patient-to-nurse ratios) on patient mortality, failure to rescue (mortality risk for patients with complicated stays) and nurse job dissatisfaction, burnout and nurse-rated quality of care. Design and setting: Cross-sectional analysis combining nurse survey data with discharge abstracts. Participants: Nurses (N = 3984) and general, orthopaedic, and vascular surgery patients (N = 118 752) in 30 English acute trusts. Results: Patients and nurses in the quartile of hospitals with the most favourable staffing levels (the lowest patient-to-nurse ratios) had consistently better outcomes than those in hospitals with less favourable staffing. Patients in the hospitals with the highest patient to nurse ratios had 26% higher mortality (95% CI: 12-49%); the nurses in those hospitals were approximately twice as likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs, to show high burnout levels, and to report low or deteriorating quality of care on their wards and hospitals. Conclusions: Nurse staffing levels in NHS hospitals appear to have the same impact on patient outcomes and factors influencing nurse retention as have been found in the USA.

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OBJECTIVES: To explore associations between psychiatric comorbidity and rehospitalization risk, length of hospitalization, and costs. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study of 1-year hospital administrative data. SETTING: Claims-based study of older adults hospitalized in the United States. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-one thousand four hundred twenty-nine patients from a 5% national random sample of U.S. Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and older, with at least one acute care hospitalization in 1999 with a Diagnostic-Related Group of congestive heart failure. MEASUREMENTS: The number of hospitalizations, mean length of hospital stay, and total hospitalization costs in calendar year 1999. RESULTS: Overall, 15.8% of patients hospitalized for heart failure (HF) had a coded psychiatric comorbidity; the most commonly coded comorbid psychiatric disorder was depression (8.5% of the sample). Most forms of psychiatric comorbidity were associated with greater inpatient utilization, including risk of additional hospitalizations, days of stay, and hospitalization charges. Additional hospitalization costs associated with psychiatric comorbidity ranged up to $7,763, and additional days length of stay ranged up to 1.4 days. CONCLUSION: Psychiatric comorbidity appears in a significant minority of patients hospitalized for HF and may affect their clinical and economic outcomes. The associations between psychiatric comorbidity and use of inpatient care are likely to be an underestimate, because psychiatric illness is known to be underdetected in older adults and in hospitalized medical patients.

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This exploratory study of patients in Pennsylvania (PA) and Virginia (VA) hospitals in 1998-1999 measures the segregation of care for Black patients receiving inpatient care for specific medical and surgical conditions. It also examined inpatient mortality risk for Black patients and the impact of treatment in heavily segregated hospitals on mortality for Blacks and non-Blacks. Segregation of hospital care was found across both states but was more pronounced in PA. Blacks did not experience higher mortality rates than non-Blacks either before or after controls for clinical risk factors in either state and for certain admission types had lower mortality. Both Black and non-Black surgical, heart failure, and lung disease patients treated in VA hospitals with more Black patients had poorer outcomes. Future research should examine how access, patient choice, hospital organization, processes of care, and factors related to nursing care might influence hospital outcomes for patients from different racial backgrounds.