ICU workforce: Revisiting nurse staffing

摘要

Ensuring adequate nursing staffing in the ICU is essential in providing high-quality patient care. The literature on nurse staffing ratios in the ICU has validated the relationship between ICU nurse staffing and patient outcomes. These data confirm that a higher number of registered nursing staff to patient ratio (1:1 or 1:2) relates to improved safety and better outcomes for patients (1-4).The article published in this issue of Critical Care Medicine by Kelly et al (5) reports on a multistate cross-sectional study of Medicare claims data and hospital administrative data from 2006 to 2008 to assess the association of several critical care nursing characteristics, including the number of patients per ICU nurse, the percentage of ICU nurses with bachelor's degrees or higher, and the nurse work environment to 30-day mortality among mechanically ventilated older adults in four U.S. states.