Nursing Leadership, Organization and Policy
Staffing For Safety
With thousands of patient deaths in Canadian hospitals linked to preventable adverse events, patient safety has become a pressing concern in Canadian health policy. The way hospitals manage nurse staffing may be part of the problem. However you put it — in terms of nurse-to-patient ratios or hours worked per patient — when the number of working nurses decreases, patient deaths and other adverse incidents increase. Poor decision-making around nurse staffing causes patients to needlessly suffer as they face poor quality and compromised safety in healthcare.
Fortunately, a great many resources exist to help improve the quality of nurse staffing decisions. These resources include new research reports, but also the sharing of managers’ and policy makers’ experiences — knowledge from those who work in this area in Canadian healthcare systems.
Nurse staffing and patient safety is one of the Foundation’s top priorities for knowledge transfer and exchange. The March 2006 nursing priority-setting day and its subsequent report, Looking forward, working together: Priorities for nursing leadership in Canada, confirmed nurse staffing and patient safety as a critical concern. This is not surprising, as a focus on nurse staffing benefits everyone: first and foremost, patients benefit since they have better outcomes; nurses also benefit since they report increased job satisfaction, reduced absenteeism, and greater retention; and the healthcare system at large benefits, since patients’ lengths of stay are reduced and, consequently, so are system costs.
Given the critical nature of this topic and the strong evidence base that exists, the Foundation has organized a major push of new knowledge as well as tools and strategies to help those in the field make evidence-informed nurse staffing decisions and, ultimately, improve patient safety and quality of care.
| Nurse Staffing and Patient Safety Knowledge Network |
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New knowledge network on nurse staffing and patient safety launched Nursing stakeholders have long indicated a need for a knowledge network - a group of experts who work together on a common issue. This need was further emphasized at the Nursing Leadership, Organization, and Policy Network Day in Vancouver in March 2006, where the creation of a knowledge network was identified as essential to furthering research and advancing evidence-informed thinking and practices specific to nurse staffing and patient safety. The Foundation and its partners have now released an expression of interest for the Nurse Staffing and Patient Safety Knowledge Network. To read about the network's goals and objectives, or to fill out the membership form, please click here. |
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Improving nurse retention through professional development Find out how a Toronto hospital network is using professional development for nurses to improve their research capacity and, thus, their satisfaction and retention in "If you build it, they will stay: How a hospital network is using evidence to guide a professional development-based approach to nurse retention and patient care," the latest issue of Promising Practices.
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| New Knowledge |
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Much work has gone into creating a strong evidence base to demonstrate the impact of nurse staffing decisions on patient outcomes and quality of care. For its part, the Foundation has supported a number of studies demonstrating the importance of appropriate nurse staffing. Most recently, the Staffing for Safety synthesis pulled together what is known about the issue and provided evidence-informed recommendations. Syntheses
Completed research reports
Reports in progress |
| Tools and Strategies |
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In addition to creating a strong research base, main messages must be tailored for those who make staffing decisions and shared through various forums and media.
Research Summaries |
