Nurse staffing and hospital‐acquired conditions: A systematic review

Sujin Shin, Jin‐Hwa Park and Sung‐Heui Bae

Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2019, vol. 28, issue 23-24, 4264-4275

Abstract: Aims and Objectives To systematically review and synthesise primary studies on the relationship between nurse staffing and hospital‐acquired conditions. Background Research examining the association between nurse staffing and hospital‐acquired conditions is varied owing to the use of different definitions and methods. Design This study was conducted based on a systematic review of related nursing literature. Methods The CINAHL, Cochrane Library, DBpia, EBSCO, PubMed, PsycINFO and RISS databases were searched for either English or Korean language studies published between January 2000 and August 2018 that examined the association between nurse staffing and hospital‐acquired conditions. We used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses check list. Results Totally, 19 published studies were included in the systematic review. Various measures were used to examine association between nurse staffing and hospital‐acquired conditions. The majority of the reviewed studies revealed negative relationships between nurse staffing levels and hospital‐acquired conditions. However, a substantial number of relationships were not significant. Conclusions There is a need for future studies to examine the differences in the relationship between nurse staffing and hospital‐acquired conditions and to use precise data collection on registered nurses’ hours per patient day and total hours per patient day, as it is difficult to collect data on these measures. The findings of this study suggest that sufficient nurse staffing is a strong indicator of the provision of quality patient care. However, continuous efforts are recommended to find more conclusive relationships between nurse staffing and hospital‐acquired conditions and to formulate guidelines regarding nurse staffing strategies. Relevance to clinical practice Nurse staffing is an important managerial strategy. Especially, given health policy changes, hospitals need to develop staffing strategies to prevent hospital‐acquired conditions.

Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15046

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:28:y:2019:i:23-24:p:4264-4275

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Clinical Nursing from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().