Effects of Public Reporting Legislation of Nurse Staffing: A Trend Analysis

American Psychiatric Nurses Association Position: Staffing Inpatient Psychiatric Units

OBJECTIVE

An American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA) task force reviewed current staffing research to revise and update the 2011 APNA "Staffing inpatient psychiatric units" position paper and provide recommendations to the APNA Board of Directors on how psychiatric mental health (PMH) nurses might champion the staffing needs of inpatient psychiatric units.

METHODS

Current research on staffing and nursing practice in inpatient psychiatric units was reviewed as well as variables believed to influence staffing and nursing practice, such as consumer needs and workplace culture. Since current nurse staffing principles emphasize nursing value and how that value is connected to outcomes, the literature search included a focus on staffing and related patient outcomes.

RESULTS

PMH nurses are critical to the safety and quality of care in inpatient psychiatric units. However, there are little existing data on the relationship between staffing levels and even common adverse events such as staff injury and restraint of patients. Furthermore, there is scant research conducted on inpatient psychiatric units that informs optimal staffing models or establishes links between staffing and patient outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS

Consistent with current evidence, the universal use of a single method or model of determining staffing needs (e.g., nursing hours per, case mix index, or mandatory ratios) is not recommended. PMH nurses should champion systematic evaluation of staffing on their inpatient units against select patient, nurse, and system outcomes. A data repository of PMH nurse-sensitive outcomes is necessary to benchmark unit performance and staffing.

Improving hospital nurse staffing during the pandemic: Implementation of the 2019 Fund for Health Care Staff in Belgium

Chronic hospital nurse understaffing is a pre-existing condition of the COVID-19 pandemic. With nurses on the frontline against the pandemic, safe nurse staffing in hospitals is high on the political agenda of the responsible ministers of Health. This paper presents a recent Belgian policy reform to improve nurse staffing levels. Although the reform was initiated before the pandemic, its roll-out took place from 2020 onwards. Through a substantial increase of the hospital budget, policy makers envisaged to improve patient-to-nurse ratios. Yet, this ambition was considerably toned down during the implementation. Due to a shortage of nurses in the labour market, hospital associations successfully lobbied to allocate part of the budget to hire non-nursing staff. Moreover, other healthcare settings claimed their share of the pie. Elements of international best-practice examples such as ward managers supernumerary to the team and increasing the transparency on staffing decisions were adopted. Other measures, such as mandated patient-to-nurse ratios, nurse staffing committees, or the monitoring or public reporting of ratios, were not retained. Additional measures were taken to safeguard that bedside staffing levels would improve, such as the requirement to demonstrate a net increase in staff to obtain additional budget, staffing plan's approval by local work councils and recommendation to base staff allocation on patient acuity measures. This policy process makes clear that the engagement of budgets is only a first step towards safe staffing levels, which needs to be embedded in a comprehensive policy plan. Future evaluation of bedside nurse staffing levels and nurse wellbeing is needed to conclude about the effectiveness of these measures and the intended and unintended effects they provoked.

A repeated cross-sectional study of nurses immediately before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for action

BACKGROUND

The shortage of nursing care in US hospitals has become a national concern.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this manuscript was to determine whether hospital nursing care shortages are primarily due to the pandemic and thus likely to subside or due to hospital nurse understaffing and poor working conditions that predated it.

METHODS

This study used a repeated cross-sectional design before and during the pandemic of 151,335 registered nurses in New York and Illinois, and a subset of 40,674 staff nurses employed in 357 hospitals.

FINDINGS

No evidence was found that large numbers of nurses left health care or hospital practice in the first 18 months of the pandemic. Nurses working in hospitals with better nurse staffing and more favorable work environments prior to the pandemic reported significantly better outcomes during the pandemic.

DISCUSSION

Policies that prevent chronic hospital nurse understaffing have the greatest potential to stabilize the hospital nurse workforce at levels supporting good care and clinician wellbeing.

Alternative Approaches to Ensuring Adequate Nurse Staffing: The Effect of State Legislation on Hospital Nurse Staffing

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to addresses the basic question of whether alternative legislative approaches are effective in encouraging hospitals to increase nurse staffing.

METHODS

Using 16 years of nationally representative hospital-level data from the American Hospital Association (AHA) annual survey, we employed a difference-in-difference design to compare changes in productive hours per patient day for registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical/vocational nurses (LPNs), and nursing assistive personnel (NAP) in the state that mandated staffing ratios, states that legislated staffing committees, and states that legislated public reporting, to changes in states that did not implement any nurse staffing legislation before and after the legislation was implemented. We constructed multivariate linear regression models to assess the effects with hospital and year fixed effects, controlling for hospital-level characteristics and state-level factors.

RESULTS

Compared with states with no legislation, the state that legislated minimum staffing ratios had an 0.996 (P<0.01) increase in RN hours per patient day and 0.224 (P<0.01) increase in NAP hours after the legislation was implemented, but no statistically significant changes in RN or NAP hours were found in states that legislated a staffing committee or public reporting. The staffing committee approach had a negative effect on LPN hours (difference-in-difference=-0.076, P<0.01), while the public reporting approach had a positive effect on LPN hours (difference-in-difference=0.115, P<0.01). There was no statistically significant effect of staffing mandate on LPN hours.

CONCLUSIONS

When we included California in the comparison, our model suggests that neither the staffing committee nor the public reporting approach alone are effective in increasing hospital RN staffing, although the public reporting approach appeared to have a positive effect on LPN staffing. When we excluded California form the model, public reporting also had a positive effect on RN staffing. Future research should examine patient outcomes associated with these policies, as well as potential cost savings for hospitals from reduced nurse turnover rates.

Nurse staffing legislation: Empirical evidence and policy analysis

Unsafe nurse staffing conditions in hospitals have been shown to increase the risk of adverse patient events, including mortality. Consequently, United States and international professional nursing organizations often advocate for safer staffing conditions. There are a variety of factors to consider when staffing nurses for patient safety, such as the number of patients per nurse, nurse preparation, patient acuity, and nurse autonomy. The complex issue of staffing nurses often is compounded by cost issues and can become politicized. When nurse organizations' recommendations for safe staffing measures are disregarded by hospital administrations, nurse lobbyists and interest groups often pursue legislative action to protect patients and nurses from unsafe staffing conditions. This article presents a narrative review of safe nurse staffing factors and an analysis of nurse staffing legislation. Using a patient-centric lens, three state-level nurse staffing policies (mandated nurse-to-patient ratios, public reporting of staffing plans, and nurse staffing committees) were evaluated by empirical evidence, cost to hospitals and state governments, political feasibility, and potential to affect patient populations. Although nurse staffing policy analysis can be conducted in several ways, it is crucial that nurses consider empirical evidence related to staffing policies as well as evaluations of implemented policies and political influences.

Job and family demands and burnout among healthcare workers: The moderating role of workplace flexibility

Burnout is a growing problem among healthcare workers. Whereas there are numerous predictors of burnout, this article explores the compounding effects of job and family demands among nurses and Patient Care Associates (PCA). This study used the 2018 survey data of the Boston Hospital Health Workers Study (BHWHS) to assess the relationship of job and family demands, workplace flexibility, and burnout (N = 874). In addition, it aimed to evaluate the moderating effect of workplace flexibility and job and family demands on burnout. Results of the study demonstrate that active and high strained healthcare workers are associated with higher odds of experiencing burnout as well as workers who reported perceived low workplace flexibility. In addition, workplace flexibility is associated with reduced odds of experiencing burnout. Workplace flexibility moderated the relationship of childless married healthcare workers and burnout. The study shows that workplace flexibility plays a critical role in potentially reducing odds of burnout in the healthcare worker population. Assessing the perception and accessibility to workplace flexibility among workers is imperative to improve worker well-being and the quality of care provided to patients especially the current effects to worker's health during a pandemic.

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Burnout is an increasing concern among healthcare workers.

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We examined the buffering effects of workplace flexibility on the compounding effects of job and family demands on burnout.

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Workplace flexibility is associated with lower odds of burnout.

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Healthcare workers who are categorized as active and high-strained are associated with higher odds of burnout.

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Workplace flexibility moderated the relationship of married healthcare workers without children and burnout.

Improved work environments and staffing lead to less missed nursing care: A panel study

AIM

To document how changes in the hospital work environment and nurse staffing over time are associated with changes in missed nursing care.

BACKGROUND

Missed nursing care is considered an indicator of poorer care quality and has been associated with worse patient care experiences and health outcomes. Several systematic reviews of cross-sectional studies report that nurses in hospitals with supportive work environments and higher staffing miss less care. Causal evidence demonstrating these relationships is needed.

METHODS

This panel study utilized secondary data from 23,650 nurses surveyed in 2006 and 14,935 surveyed in 2016 in 458 hospitals from a four-state survey of random samples of licensed nurses.

RESULTS

Over the 10-year period, most hospitals exhibited improved work environments, better nurse staffing and more missed care. In hospitals with improved work environments or nurse staffing, the prevalence and frequency of missed care decreased significantly. The effect on missed care of changes in the work environment was greater than that of nurse staffing.

CONCLUSIONS

Changes in the hospital work environment and staffing influence missed care.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Modifications in the work environment and staffing are strategies to mitigate care compromise. Nurse managers should investigate work settings in order to identify weaknesses.

Public Reporting of Nurse Staffing in the United States

Extensive evidence supports the association between increased nurse staffing and improved quality of patient care. Public reporting or public disclosure of nurse staffing patterns aims to incentivize hospitals to improve staffing by making comparison data available for consumers as well as nurses and hospital administrators. Currently, eight states in the United States publicly report and disclose information on nurse staffing levels to the public. We review the available public reporting mechanisms by systematically categorizing and comparing states that report nurse staffing. We also discuss the implications for future state and federal policy with regard to publicly reporting or disclosing nurse staffing.