A study led by the University and King’s College London has shown that a higher registered nurse to patient ratio is linked to a reduced risk of inpatient death.
The study of staffing levels in NHS hospitals, published in the online journal BMJ Open, found that in trusts where registered nurses had six or fewer patients to care for, the death rate for patients with medical conditions was 20 per cent lower than in those where they had more than 10.
Hospitals with more doctors per bed also had lower death rates but hospitals with more unregistered nursing support workers may have had higher death rates.
Professor Peter Griffiths, Chair of Health Services Research at the University, NIHR CLAHRC (Wessex), comments:
“This does not, in itself, provide a robust basis to identify safe staffing thresholds but given the overall strength of evidence for an association, we are showing that, in England, the registered nursing workforce is clearly associated with patient safety.
We found no evidence that having more support workers is associated with reduced death rates in hospital. Some of our findings suggest the opposite. A policy of replacing registered nurses with support staff may threaten patient safety.”