Nurses’ reports of working conditions and hospital quality of care in 12 countries in Europe
Section snippets
Data and methods
The data for this report are from nurse surveys undertaken as part of the RN4CAST study, a cross-sectional study of nurses and patients in 488 general acute care hospitals in 12 European countries (Belgium, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland). The countries include geographic representation from north, south, east and west in Europe, and include countries with varying levels of resources devoted to healthcare. The number of
Nurse characteristics
Table 1 shows that differences in the average age of the nurses were not pronounced between countries and varied in most countries between 35 and 40 years, with the average age in Poland and Finland being slightly older. Years of experience in nursing varied similarly across most countries within a reasonably tight range of 11–15 years, with the average being slightly less in Norway (8 years) and more in Germany (16 years). Male nurses were notably scarce in Poland and Finland (less than 5%),
Discussion
Nurses’ reports about hospital care in Europe call attention to substantial variation in nursing resources (patient to nurse ratios and skill mix), workforce management deficiencies, and quality of care challenges. While the 12 countries studied differ substantially in national economic conditions and resources devoted to healthcare, nurses in each country identified problems in human resources management in hospitals that if not addressed could substantially impact future hospital nurse
Conclusions
We see in these reports from close to 34,000 nurses practicing in hospitals in 12 European countries strains in the nurse workforce possibly the result of inadequate staffing and resources as well as deficiencies in human resources management. These strains may be the result of austerity measures that simultaneously condense hospital care into shorter stays while holding the size of the nurse workforce constant and/or substituting less expensive workers for nurses. A sizeable fraction of nurses
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