In a cohort of over 600,000 hospitalized patients, each day of low RN staffing was associated with an increased risk of death within 30 days of admission (adjusted HR 1.08, 95% CI 1.07-1.09), as was each day of low nurse support staffing (aHR 1.07, 95% CI 1.06-1.08), reported Peter Griffiths, RN, PhD, of the University of Southampton, and co-authors in JAMA Network Open.
While these findings aren’t novel, knowing the level of nurse staffing for every single day of a patient’s stay makes it more likely that the findings are causal, Griffiths told MedPage Today. Of note, when low staffing was prevented with the use of temporary staff, the risk of patient death was reduced but remained elevated compared with the baseline, the authors said.
In a work environment where higher ups are doing system planning, they don’t really get the point unless it is quantified. If they can’t count it, then it doesn’t count.
The study is from England, where the healthcare system is struggling at the moment. Patients spend the whole day on a trolley or on a chair or in an ambulance because there are no beds and you can’t close a hospital when it gets overloaded. Planners think they can get the same nurses to handle the workload. Planners won’t see that this is causing deaths till someone counts like this and shows them. Even then there’s no funding, there are no nurses on the market to employ and there’s no good solution.
Although this finding looks obvious, the point needs to keep being made to try to push for change.