Suchergebnisse

Three reports from the Institute of Medicine found that errors in hospital care were more common than previously thought; that health care delivery should be reorganized to improve the quality of care; and that, operationally, nurses have a critical role in securing patient safety. Now the contribution of nursing to the reduction of adverse events must be established empirically, so that nursing-sensitive indicators can be incorporated in such health care-improvement strategies as public reporting of hospital quality and performance-based payment systems. This article reviews what is known from previous nursing outcomes research and identifies gaps in the current state of knowledge. It then describes the contribution to research that can be made through the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators TM (NDNQI®). Next it reports an NDNQI study that found three nursing workforce characteristics to be related significantly to patient outcomes: total nursing hours per patient day, percentage of hours supplied by RNs, and years of experience in nursing, and concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for both for nursing administrators and outcomes-based, quality-improvement initiatives.

Funding: BK has received a project specific grant from the University of Basel to realize this project. In addition, this study is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant 320030_149496/1) and the Gottfried and Julia Bangerter-Rhyner Foundation. The provided work by BG, JHL, CW, and JY has been supported by the National Cancer Institute Cancer Centre Support Grant P30 CA168524 and used BISR core. The Health Services Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, receives core funding from the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health Directorates. DC is supported by a Research Chair from the Canadian Institute for Health Research. The mentioned funding sources have no role in the design and conduct of the study; the collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. ; Peer reviewed ; Publisher PDF