One Nursing Wish for the New Year
By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief
If there’s one universal complaint by nurses, it’s that there aren’t enough of them on a shift to provide the care their patients need. We have a lot of data linking nurse staffing to patient outcomes and revealing the deleterious effects of missed care because of insufficient staffing. Yet, according to many hospital nurses I’ve spoken with, they still find themselves stretched to the breaking point by high patient acuity, rapid patient turnover, and increasing documentation requirements.
These nurses see no end in sight to this situation as hospitals argue that they have insufficient reimbursements and revenues to increase staffing. Ironically, as hospitals invest in pricey, cutting-edge new technologies that haven’t been shown to improve patient outcomes, the evidence about nurse staffing continues to be ignored.
In November, the ANA released a white paper, “Optimal Nurse Staffing to Improve Quality of Care and Patient Outcomes.” The paper summarizes and updates the research on staffing and outcomes, linking staffing to Medicare initiatives to reduce costs, adverse events, and readmissions. The report notes:
“Existing nurse staffing systems are often antiquated and inflexible. Greater benefit can be derived from staffing models that consider the number of nurses and/or the nurse-to-patient ratios and can be adjusted to account for unit and shift level factors. Factors that influence nurse staffing needs include: […]