You are here

Article Text

Article menu
PDF
Nursing issues
Quantitative study—other
Productive hours by direct-care providers is the best measure of nurse staffing in relation to patient outcomes
  1. Lynn Unruh
  1. Department of Health Management & Informatics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA
  1. Correspondence to : Dr Lynn Unruh, Department of Health Management & Informatics, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816, USA; lunruh{at}mail.ucf.edu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/eb-2015-102083

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Commentary on: Park SH, Blegen MA, Spetz J, et al. Comparison of nurse staffing measurements in staffing-outcomes research. Med Care 2015;53:e1–8.OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed

    Implications for practice and research

    • The usual measures of registered nurse hours per patient day (RNHPPD) may not be the best to use when assessing the relationship to quality because they do not distinguish registered nurse (RN) hours spent directly with the patient.

    • Administrators should use productive direct-care hours when estimating workforce needs and setting daily staffing plans.

    • Patient churn and qualitative measures of nurses, such as educational level, tenure and expertise are important to examine when assessing staff adequacy.1

    Context

    A growing body of evidence indicates that nurse staffing is positively related to patient outcomes. However, the evidence is not consistent across quality indicators.2 , …

    View Full Text

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Copyright information:

    Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/