Nurse-Patient Ratio, Safety, and Quality of Care

Patient-nurse ratios are an aspect of every inpatient healthcare setting that directly affect patient safety and satisfaction. This ratio can safely vary from unit to unit depending on the acuity of patients each nurse is working with. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the current shortage of nurses many nurses are working under unsafe increased patient loads. Research shows that when these staffing conditions are present nurses more frequently are unable to complete important nursing interventions and tasks for each patient (Taskiran Eskici, G., & Baykal, U, 2022). Increased staffing ratios also increase the chances of safety events occurring with patients because nurses are not able to pay as close attention to each individual (Cho, E. et al., 2016). In order to staff their units, many hospitals are offering high rates of overtime pay to incentivize current staff to work overtime shifts regularly. But, when nurses work overtime this too leads to missed care interventions and increased safety risks for patients (Griffiths, P et al., 2014). In order to properly staff a unit without staff working consistent overtime hours units must hire enough staff to ensure appropriate patient-nurse ratios. In order to research this topic a hospital unit that is currently understaffed, as defined by staff working with increased patient ratios for their specific type of nursing and/or proper ratios as a result of at least two instances of staff working overtime shifts in a week, should focus on hiring more nurses until those situations are no longer happening on a regular basis. Once the unit has been properly staffed for a period of over 6 months, data from safety events filed and patient satisfaction levels from patient surveys should be compared with data from before the unit was fully staffed to see whether patient safety and satisfaction have increased