Nurse staffing levels and the incidence of mortality and morbidity in the adult intensive care unit: A literature review.
The full text of this article written by Matthew McGahan can be found at this link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22515951
Studies have shown that nurse staffing levels, among many other factors in the hospital setting, contribute to adverse patient outcomes. Concerns about patient safety and quality of care have resulted in numerous studies being conducted to examine the relationship between nurse staffing levels and the incidence of adverse patient events in both general wards and intensive care units.
Result: Most of the studies were observational in nature with variables obtained retrospectively from large hospital databases. Nurse staffing measures and patient outcomes varied widely across the studies. While an overall statistical association between increased nurse staffing levels and decreased adverse patient outcomes was not found in this review, most studies concluded that a trend exists between increased nurse staffing levels and decreased adverse events.
