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Best Practices for Nurses Are Also Best Practices for Patients

A recent national survey found that an astounding 75 percent of RNs feel that the quality of nursing care at their facility has declined during the past two years, with 68 percent of RNs citing staffing levels as a major contributing factor to this problem.

Shockingly, more than 40 percent of current nurses report that they would not feel comfortable having a family member taken care of in their hospital.25

The most comprehensive study linking staffing levels to patient outcomes was conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health.26 The researchers found a strong and consistent relationship between nurse staffing and five outcomes in medical patients: length of stay, urinary infections, gastrointestinal bleeding, pneumonia, and shock or cardiac arrest. In addition, the authors report that "the death rate was 2.5 percent higher for 'failure to rescue,' meaning that the patients died from conditions that might have been reversed if they had been treated in time."27

 

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