Clarke, Sean P., Ph.D., RN,

Clarke, Sean P., Ph.D., RN, CNRP, CS; and Aiken, Linda H., Ph.D., RN, FAAN, FRCN. "Registered Nurse Staffing and Patient and Nurse Outcomes in Hospitals: a Commentary." Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, 4:2, May 2003. pp. 104-111. This article considers the implications of research published in 2002. This research demonstrated that staffing decisions affect patient outcome. The researchers looked at 168 hospitals in Pennsylvania and found that the ratio of nurses to patients affected patient outcome.

This issue is crucial to the nursing profession because adverse outcomes were directly related to nursing in two ways. First, in hospitals with higher nurse-to-patient ratios, mortality rose, particularly from failure to resuscitate. In addition, the problem resulted in high rates of nurse burnout and work dissatisfaction. Several factors contribute to the current nursing shortage. One mentioned by the authors is a need to control hospital costs, and one way to do that is to minimize the size of the staff.

However, there is also a general nursing shortage, according to the authors. That also contributes to the problem. I do not have any differences of opinions with the authors. I found their arguments persuasive. Naturally nurses and nursing students believe what they do is important. It is important for the patients that we have research to back this fact up. A find their argument compelling because of the way they did their research. They looked at a lot of hospitals - 168.

The data they collected showed that patient complications and patient death rose when nurses had more patients. In addition, they took other factors into consideration. For instance, they looked at the personalities of the nurses when looking at the issue of job dissatisfaction. The researchers decided what questions to answer in this research in response to real issues going on in the field of nursing. They could see that nursing staffs were spread more thinly in some hospitals than others.

They knew that nurses believe they provide valuable, sometimes life-saving services. The authors connected their issue directly to nursing practice and the quality of patient care. They found that when nurses were responsible for more than six patients, mortality rose 7% and nurse burnout rose 25%. Based on their research, they predicted that 20,000 more patients would die if nursing ratios in hospitals rose from 4:1 to 8:1.

The authors predict that nursing will have to be seen as the vitally important role it truly is before hospitals will realize that cutting nursing staff cannot save money without putting patients at risk. They noted some changes going on in the nursing profession right now including significant numbers of nurses approaching retirement age and technological advances, which increase the demand for nurses to run and monitor this equipment. The.