Date and Time
March 31, 2004
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the Public

Speaker
Jeffrey J. Geppert - Stanford University

Recent attention regarding nurse staffing issues has ranged from anticipated serious nursing shortages to fear of replacement by HMOs of registered nurses with less skilled and lower paid workers. Public and private policy has sought to address these concerns through nurse recruitment efforts and mandated nurse staffing ratios. Supporters of these policies argue that as the majority of clinical personnel in hospitals, nurses' ability to provide high quality care is an important factor for patient outcomes. Research examining the relationship between hospital nurse staffing levels and patient outcomes has found some impact on quality of care for selected indicators, but the results have been mixed. However, these studies have not examined in detail the association between nursing staffing ratios and other hospital characteristics that may also be important determinants of quality of care. This presentation explores the relationship between nurse staffing levels, hospital characteristics and clinical outcomes as measured by the AHRQ Patient Safety Indicators (PSI), a tool developed for AHRQ by the Stanford-UCSF Evidence-Based Practice Center. Jeffrey Geppert is a senior research analyst at the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research.