Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States and the medication error component is the 4th leading cause of death. This is largely caused by systemic problems in the management of our healthcare system and lack of deployment of available information technologies. I have been doing presentations at major conferences for years on medical error pointing out that poor financial performance (due to lack of automation) leads to nursing shortages which directly leads to patient death. This week, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the numbers. Every additional patient for a nurse increases the risk of death for all patients by 7%.
Hospital Nurse Staffing and Patient Mortality, Nurse Burnout, and Job Dissatisfaction
Linda H. Aiken, PhD, RN; Sean P. Clarke, PhD, RN; Douglas M. Sloane, PhD; Julie Sochalski, PhD, RN; Jeffrey H. Silber, MD, PhD
JAMA. 2002;288:1987-1993
Context: The worsening hospital nurse shortage and recent California legislation mandating minimum hospital patient-to-nurse ratios demand an understanding of how nurse staffing levels affect patient outcomes and nurse retention in hospital practice.
Objective: To determine the association between the patient-to-nurse ratio and patient mortality, failure-to-rescue (deaths following complications) among surgical patients, and factors related to nurse retention.
Design, Setting, and Participants: Cross-sectional analyses of linked data from 10 184 staff nurses surveyed, 232 342 general, orthopedic, and vascular surgery patients discharged from the hospital between April 1, 1998, and November 30, 1999, and administrative data from 168 nonfederal adult general hospitals in Pennsylvania.
Main Outcome Measures: Risk-adjusted patient mortality and failure-to-rescue within 30 days of admission, and nurse-reported job dissatisfaction and job-related burnout.
Results: After adjusting for patient and hospital characteristics (size, teaching status, and technology), each additional patient per nurse was associated with a 7% (odds ratio [OR], 1.07; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.03-1.12) increase in the likelihood of dying within 30 days of admission and a 7% (OR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.02-1.11) increase in the odds of failure-to-rescue. After adjusting for nurse and hospital characteristics, each additional patient per nurse was associated with a 23% (OR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.13-1.34) increase in the odds of burnout and a 15% (OR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.07-1.25) increase in the odds of job dissatisfaction.
Conclusions: In hospitals with high patient-to-nurse ratios, surgical patients experience higher risk-adjusted 30-day mortality and failure-to-rescue rates, and nurses are more likely to experience burnout and job dissatisfaction.