| dc.description.abstract | Aims
This dissertation aims to explore the relationship between nurse staffing levels and patient
outcomes. It proposes to summarise the evidence regarding this link and expose and discuss
the gaps and limitations in these studies.
Background
As healthcare has developed, quality of care has become a focal problem for the healthcare
system and nurses. Increasing concerns about patient outcomes and the quality of care have
resulted in several studies, focused on identifying adequate nurse staffing levels and the
relationship between nurse staffing and quality of care.
An extensive amount of literature over the last 10 years reports the importance of the role of
nurses and their duty to provide safe, good quality care and the relationship between low nurse
staffing levels and adverse patient outcomes, for example: falls, missed care and even death.
Despite the size of the existing evidence, there are numerous limitations in these studies that
have not been reported extensively.
Amongst these gaps is the theory of endogeneity, which is a form of bias that occurs when
estimating causal effects between variables. While there are no discrepancies in current
literature about the causal pathway between nurse staffing and patient outcomes, endogeneity
points to the fact that the scope of the effects may be biased or incorrect.
This topic is of great importance, as the research is still unclear about what constitutes as
adequate nurse staffing levels that will promote high-quality patient outcomes.
Design
Scoping review to synthesise existing knowledge in the literature on the relationship between
nurse staffing levels and patient outcomes.
Methods
29 primary studies conducted in hospitals in high income countries were reviewed between
2008 and 2018.
Findings
Numerous gaps were found in the literature. This scoping review found that most of the current
evidence did not discuss the forms of bias that could affect the causal path between nurse
staffing and patient outcomes. Overall, the evidence shows an increase in nurse staffing levels
has a positive effect on patient outcomes. However, a majority of the studies showed that
although nurse staffing levels were vital to patients’ safety, there were other confounding
factors that mediated this relationship or by themselves had a strong impact on patient
outcomes.
Conclusion
As previous research suggests, this paper confirms that there is a indeed a correlation between
nurse staffing levels and patient outcomes. However, many studies have also revealed that
nurse staffing is not the only variable involved in patient outcomes. More research is warranted,
to identify other variables that affect patient outcomes, so that recommendations can be made
for policy and guidelines will be able to assure the best possible care is provided.
Keywords
Nurse staffing, patient outcomes, relationship | en |
