With the climate today in healthcare, hospitals must seek other ways to cut costs. Staffing tends to be the first area of cuts to budgets. However; it has been found that patient safety errors tend to increase when staff is decreased (Frederickson, 2013). Some states have taken it upon themselves to set up maximum patient to staff ratios. These states have seen lower incidents and higher staff satisfaction (Tellez & Ann Seago, 2013). PROBLEM: Increasing patient to staff ratios also increases safety risks to patients. RESEARCH PURPOSE: To determine if there is correlation between increased patient to staff ratios and increase in medication errors, treatment errors, falls, cardiac arrests, and deaths. PIOCT Questions: (P) Do nurses who have higher patient loads (I) make more errors and (O) potentially have worse patient outcomes (C) than nurses who have smaller patient loads (T) over the course of 6 months to 1 year. References Frederickson, W. (2013). Nurses Are Exposing the Reality: Patients Are At Risk. Minnesota Nursing Accent, 5-7. Tellez, M., & Ann Seago, J. (2013). California Nurse Staffing Law and RN Workforce Changes. Nursing Economic$, 18-26. Bibliography for Qualitative Cox Patrick, W. W. (2014). The American Epidemic: The U.S. Nursing Shortage and Turnover Problem. Marshall Digital Scholar. Kundson, L. (2013). Nurse staffing levels linked to patient outcomes, nurse retention. AORN Connections. Mills Jane, C.-S. J. (2016). Retaining early career registered nurses: a case study. Bio Medical Central, 1-6. Susan Bradley, F. K. (2015). Too few staff, too many patients: a qualitative study of the impact on obstetric care providers and on quality of care in Malawi. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4377843/ References for Quanitative Fitzsimons, S. M. (2013). Knowing Generation Y: a new generation of nurses in practice. British Journal of Nursing, 1173-1179. Frederickson, W. (2013). Nurses Are Exposing the Reality: Patients Are At Risk. Minnesota Nursing Accent, 5-7. Rep. Schakowsky, J. D.-I.-9. (2017, May 5). H.R.2392 - Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act of 2017. Retrieved from Congress.gov: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2392 Tellez, M., & Ann Seago, J. (2013). California Nurse Staffing Law and RN Workforce Changes. Nursing Economic$, 18-26.
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