Mortality rises, falls with nurse staffing levels

Patients are more likely to die or experience complications in hospitals where there are lower levels of nurse staffing, according to a new study from the U.K.'s Royal College of Nursing. To learn more about the relationship between nurse staffing and patient outcomes, researchers examined 118,752 patient episodes of care in 30 hospital trusts in England. They also interviewed more than 4,000 nurses. The researchers concluded that mortality rates were 26 percent higher in wards with lower nurse-to-patient ratios. Research leader Anne Marie Rafferty concluded that with higher nurse-to-patient ratios in place, 246 lives could have been saved. The finding echoes an earlier U.S.-based study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that patients had a 7 percent greater chance of dying within 30 days of admission for each additional patient per nurse.

To learn more about the study:
- see this Royal College release
- read the JAMA abstract