ANALYZING PUBLISHED RESEARCH2 Clinical Question unsafe staffing levels and the impact on patient safety

  The Problem For this RUA, I was assigned to research unsafe staffing levels and the impact on patient safety. This is a hot topic in any hospital that you visit.In hospitals today many nurses are expected to provide exceptional care to every patient, however, this can become difficult when there aren’t enough nurses to take on the heavy patient load and patients can find themselves not receiving the proper care they deserve.  This also has an impact on nurses since they have a higher workload and this can lead them to feel burned out and find it harder to provide the best care patients deserve. I will examine the statistics and evidence in my articles to support that adequate staffing has a direct relationship to patient safety and that nurse staff ratios is important for not only patients, but for nurses as well. Significance of Problem and Statistics Research shows that “there is a strong relationship between nurse staffing, including both the number of nurses and the mix of competent nurses, and patient safety” (Menella, Karakashian, 2017).Menella and Karakashian (2017) found that “each additional RN full-time equivalent per day was associated with a 9% reduction in the odds of death in the ICU, a 16% reduction in the surgical unit setting, and a 6% reduction in the medical unit setting” and that “higher RN staffing levels were associated with lower rates of healthcare-associated pneumonia, failure to rescue, and healthcare-associated bloodstream infections”. Shekelle (2013) says that in a study comparing staffing levels at 8:1 vs. 4:1, “there were 1 to 5 fewer deaths per 1000 inpatient days with more nurse staffing per patient”.In a hospital setting, do lower nurse staffing ratios compared to higher nurse staffing ratios improve patient outcomes?