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Nurse-to-Patient Ratio

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RUNNING HEAD: Nurse-to-Patient Ratios

A Literature Review: Nurse-to-Patient Ratios and Their Relationships with Other Variables

Since the times when Florence Nightingale took care of patients, there has been a question about what factors affect patient care. One of these factors, nurse-to-patient ratios, has gotten significant publicity over the last several years due to a change in legislation in California. This increase in publicity has sparked many researchers' interest to further evaluate these ratios in connection with patient outcomes and other variables. Through lots of research and analysis there is evidence that a lower nurse-to-patient ratio does reduce the negative patient outcomes in patient care. Some of these outcomes include urinary tract infections, upper gastrointestinal bleeding, shock, pneumonia, failure-to-rescue, and death (Curtin, 2008). Although lowering the ratio does show a decrease in these outcomes, it does not solve all the problems in the nursing profession (“Safety in Numbers,” 2008). The other variables that have a significant relationship with these nurse-to-patient ratios include retention and recruitment of nurses, malpractice, medical errors, and cost. In this review of literature, a direct relationship between nurse-to-patient ratios and other variables should be visible to readers to better understand the issues that are currently identified in nursing in the health care industry. One of the most referenced studies done on nurse-to-patient ratios was done by Aiken, Clark, Sloane, Sochalski, and Silber (2002) in 168 hospitals in Pennsylvania between April 1998 and November 1999. These researchers analyzed the relationship between patient-to-nurse ratio and patient death, deaths following complications, and factors that dealt with nurse retention. Their data was collected from 10,184 staff nurses and 232,342 surgery

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