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Nursing Environment

Happy New Year!!  The year 2013 will bring great changes, and challenges to healthcare.  One of the biggest focuses in healthcare continues to be the nursing environment.  There continues to be new evidence to support the need for healthcare workers to work in a collaborative manner to ensure quality patient care and a healthy work environment.  I attended a webinar this week presented by Dr. Linda Aiken who reported the following findings about nurse staffing, outcomes, and the work environment:

  • According to the Practice Environment Scale (PES) nurses report that management is not responsive in resolving problems in patient care
  • Each 1 patient in a nurse's workload is associated with 7% increased mortality (Aiken, 2011 "Medical Care")
  • 38% of nurses have BSN that work at hospitals (range 0-80%)
  • Patients in hospital with 50% BSN RNs have 15% lower odds on dying 
  • Experience is not a substitute for education
  • 41% staff nurses rated environment poor/fair (PES; Aiken, 2011 "Medical Care")
  • With poor work environment, nurse staffing levels had no effect
  • The cost of improving nurse staffing in hospitals with a poor work environment is not a good investment
Stay tuned for more details from this very important work.  What have you done to improve the nursing work environment?  Until next time...

~Your Nurse Leader Today

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