Relationships between nurse staffing and patient outcomes

Abstract

Nursing studies have shown that nursing care delivery changes affect staff and organizational outcomes, but the effects on client outcomes have not been studied sufficiently. The purpose of this study was thus to examine the effect of nurse staffing variables- daily average hours of care, ratio of RNs to average patient census, workload, and skill mix- on patient outcomes as measured by five adverse occurrences. The adverse patient occurrences included unit rates of patient falls, pressure ulcers, respiratory and urinary tract infections, and patient/family complaints. Variables were measured retrospectively using consistently available data from each month of fiscal year 2000 from 21 medical-surgical nursing care units in a 1394-bed medical center in Taiwan. Data were analyzed by descriptive and multivariate inferential statistics while controlling for patient acuity level. Results showed that workload of nurses is the most powerful predictor of nosocomial infections and hours of care best predicted the five adverse patient outcome indices. Lower adverse outcome rates were more consistently related to a higher proportion of N3 level of RNs. Patients could fare better when N3s play a significant role in the staffing mix. The findings provide further empirical support for the context of implications that patient outcomes are correlated to organizational structure. It obviously illustrates the relationships between nurse staffing and the quality of nursing practice.