Research process and methodology

Nursing Education Level & Patient Outcomes

Extant literature on negative patient outcomes in the healthcare industry have closely linked this phenomenon to different factors, among which include staffing adequacy, quality of care given to patients, and reported patient satisfaction to care given them. It is interesting to note, however, that negative patient outcomes could also be linked with the educational level of nurses providing patient care, which actually assumes the position that negative patient outcomes occurs when nurses are not competent enough to provide good "clinical judgment."

This relationship between nursing education level and negative patient outcomes is explored in the study entitled, "Educational levels of hospital nurses and surgical patient mortality" by Linda Aiken et. al. (2003). This article is a good example of the educational level-patient outcome relationship because it proved, quantitatively, that nurses who achieved education with "baccalaureate levels or higher" have been reported to have lower patient mortality (1617). This study and finding are critical to nursing research and nursing as a profession because this proves that among many factors thought to be contributing to negative patient outcomes, it has been empirically proven that indeed, nursing education level has a significant contribution to negative patient outcome. This implies that quality patient care in hospitals can be ensured by hiring nurses with competent educational experiences compared to nurses who have attained education levels lower than the baccalaureate level. Further analysis of Aiken et. al.'s study illustrates a breakdown of the study's components, enumerated and discussed below:

Hypothesis

There is a significant relationship between nurses' education and patient outcomes.

Study design

The research is a cross-sectional study that sought to confirm the researchers' hypothesis (stated above) among 232,342 general, orthopedic, and vascular surgery patients from 168 general hospitals in Pennsylvania.

Variables

Variables under study were nurses' educational levels and patient outcomes; additional variables included were nurses' workload and work experience. Patient outcomes were measured through patient mortality and failure-to-rescue rates.

Classification of variables

Nursing education level was the independent variable of the study, while patient outcome was the dependent variable. The former was identified as an ordinal type of variable, while the latter is an interval/ratio variable type.