Continuing changes within the health care field have brought to the forefront a growing awareness and concern regarding the quality of health care being delivered today in the nation’s acute care hospitals. This report summarizes the state of acute care hospitals today, looks at how this environment influences the trends within nursing, examines how these [...]

During the 1990s, repeated reports of cut-backs in hospital nurse staffing and possible adverse effects on patients became a significant concern of the nursing profession. These reports generated public and media interest, led to Congressional involvement, a report by the Institute of Medicine, and the development of a national research agenda by various agencies of [...]

Objectives: To assess how nurse to patient ratios and nurse work hours were associated with patient outcomes in acute care hospitals, factors that influence nurse staffing policies, and nurse staffing strategies that improved patient outcomes.
Data Sources: MEDLINE® (PubMed®), CINAHL, Cochrane Databases, EBSCO research database, BioMed Central, Federal reports, National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators, National [...]

The research is clear that having fewer patients per nurse or more nursing care hours per patient day is associated with fewer adverse outcomes. Having fewer patients per nurse is associated with lower rates of mortality, failure to rescue, and some specific adverse events, especially among surgical patients. This association is no longer in dispute.
In [...]

A series of papers and reports have found that inadequate nurse staffing in hospitals across the country is compromising patient care. Most recently, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science found that low nurse staffing levels are one of the key causes contributing to 98,000 preventable deaths each year.1
As an organization representing [...]

Barack Obama has been a consistent champion of America’s nurses. As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama chaired the Senate Committee on Public Health and helped lead efforts to protect Illinois nurses and improve the quality of health care throughout Illinois. As a U.S. senator, Obama serves on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions [...]

THE HOSP ITAL IND USTR Y IN the United States is undergoing widespread reorganization that includes restructuring of the workforce. Surveys reveal that nurses now working in hospitals have serious concerns about the impact of such staffing changes on quality of care and the safety of patients.1 Media coverage of changes taking place in hospitals [...]