Safe Staffing Standards for All Hospitals
Nurses
bear the primary responsibility for the well-being of patients in
hospitals. Registered nurses not only carry out the treatments
prescribed by physicians, but they continually assess patients, monitor
their conditions, and modify interventions accordingly. They also
provide education to patients and their families to help speed recovery
and prevent relapses.
We recently asked RNs to submit testimony to us on their experiences with short-staffing. Read a selection of RN stories.
A growing body of evidence finds that low nurse staffing levels compromise patient safety. Inadequate staffing leads to unnecessary complications and deaths in hospitals.
For
each additional patient over four in a registered nurse’s care, the
risk of death increases by 7 percent for surgical patients. In
hospitals with eight patients per nurse, patients have a 31 percent greater risk of dying than those in hospitals with four patients per nurse. Source: Research by Linda A. Aiken, PhD, RN, University of Pennsylvania, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), October 23-30, 2002.
Understaffing
was a contributing factor in 24 percent of all sentinel events
(unanticipated incidents in hospitals that led to patient deaths or
injuries) reported to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of
Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). Source: “Health Care at the Crossroads,” a report by JCAHO released August 7, 2002.
In
hospitals with fewer registered nurses, patients are 2 to 9 percent
more likely to suffer complications like urinary infections and
pneumonia, 3 to 5 percent more likely to have to stay in the hospital
longer, and 2.5 percent more likely to die from “failure to rescue”
(conditions that might have been reversed if treated in time). Source: A study by Dr. Jack Needleman of the Harvard School of Public Health published in The New England Journal of Medicine on May 30, 2002.
An
extra hour of nursing attention per surgical patient each day cuts the
risk of urinary tract infection by nearly 10 percent and the risk of
contracting pneumonia by 8 percent. Source: A study by Christine Kovner, PhD, RN, and Petter J. Gergen, MD, MPH, published in Image: Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Fourth Quarter 1998.
A higher proportion of care by registered nurses results in a lower rate of medication errors and patient falls. Source: A study by M.A. Blegan and T. Vaughn, published in Nursing Economics, 16(4), 1998.