Nurse understaffing increases patient risk

LOS ANGELES, March 17 (UPI) -- Patients' death risk rises if there is understaffing of nurses, or if nurses' workloads increase due to high patient turnover, U.S. researchers say.

First author Jack Needleman of UCLA's School of Public Health and colleagues analyzed the records of nearly 198,000 admitted patients and 177,000 8-hour nursing shifts across 43 patient-care units at a large tertiary academic medical center in the United States.

The researchers calculated the difference between the target nurse-staffing level and the actual nurse-staffing level for each shift examined. The target nurse level is the proper number of hours nurses work -- ideally adjusted each shift for the number of patients and how much care they need.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that for each substantially understaffed shift patients were exposed -- falling 8 or more hours below the target level -- patients' overall mortality risk increased by 2 percent.

Because the average patient was exposed to three nursing shifts that fell below target levels, the mortality risk was about 6 percent higher than for patients on units that were always fully staffed.

The study found mortality risk increases by about 4 percent when nurses' workloads increase because of high patient turnover.