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More nursing, fewer deaths

Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Correspondence to:
MrS P Clarke
Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing, 420 Guardian Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6096, USA; sclarke@nursing.upenn.edu

Keywords: mortality; patient safety; policy; nurse staffing

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The implications for action from the growing body of research on nursing and patient safety are straightforward: hospitals seeking to improve safety outcomes should put a premium on adequate nurse staffing, a high proportion of registered nurses, a well educated nurse workforce, positive nurse-physician relations, and responsiveness of management to addressing problems in patient care identified by nurses at the bedside.

A critical mass of research confirms an association between hospital nursing capacity and patient outcomes, both within and across countries with differently organized and financed health care. Recent studies undertaken in the United States, Canada, England, Switzerland, New Zealand, the Russian Federation, and Armenia^1–6 all show that the adequacy of nurse staffing and the quality of the nurse working environment are associated with the quality of patient care. In hospitals with poor nurse work environments, patients tend to be at a heightened risk for adverse . . . [Full text of this article]