Catherwood LibraryILR School

A two-year study of 168 hospitals, 232,342 surgical patients and 10,184 nurses published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms that understaffing of nurses is leading to a vicious nationwide cycle of deteriorating patient care, rising patient mortality rates, and a worsening nurse shortage (see WIT for Sep. 27, 2001). The researchers found that when hospital managers increase patient to nurse ratios increase beyond 4-, patient death rates in the first month after surgery increase by approximately seven percent for every additional patient assigned to a nurse and increase at a more dramatic rate as more and more patients are added to a nurse?s workload. This data lends significant credibility and support to California?s passage of the first nurse-to-patient staffing regulations in the country (see WIT for Jan. 23, 2002), and the decisions by thousands of nurses across the country to unionize and even strike because of understaffing problems (see WIT?s for 7/9/02, 6/19/02, 5/28/02, 4/5/02, 3/18/02, 11/27/01 and 9/25/01).