Higher staffing levels linked to reduced risk of inpatient death
A study led by King's College London and the University of Southampton has shown that a higher registered nurse to patient ratio is linked to a reduced risk of inpatient death. The study of staffing levels in NHS hospitals, published in the online journal BMJ Open , found that in trusts where registered nurses had six or fewer patients to care for, the death rate for patients with medical conditions was 20 per cent lower than in those where they had more than 10. Hospitals with more doctors per bed also had lower death rates but hospitals with more unregistered nursing support workers may have had higher death rates. The study, by researchers from King's College London, the University of Southampton, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm and the New York School of Medicine, analysed two measures over two years (2009-11: the number of beds per registered nurse, doctor, and healthcare support worker in 137 acute care trusts; and the number of patients per ward nurse, drawn from a survey of just under 3000 registered nurses in a nationally representative sample of 31 of these trusts (46 hospitals and 401 wards). They also calculated the predicted number of deaths for medical and surgical inpatients, taking account of influential factors, such as age, other underlying conditions, and number of emergency admissions during the previous 12 months. Among patients admitted to medical, wards, higher death rates were associated with higher numbers of occupied beds for each registered nurse and for each doctor employed by the trust.
