Responding to the University of Surrey research which demonstrates a link between nurse turnover and patient mortality, Executive Director of RCN England Patricia Marquis said:
“This study adds to the growing body of evidence about the link between lower nurse numbers and patient deaths. Ministers need to pay attention and take urgent action to keep highly skilled nurses in the profession.
“Wherever you look, shifts routinely don’t have enough registered nurses to keep patients safe. This has become normalised and is unacceptable. Boosting recruitment into the profession is crucial to patient safety, but so too is giving experienced staff a reason to stay. Unrelenting pressures, low pay and delivering compromised care are forcing thousands of nurses to quit and it is patients who are paying the price.
“Nurses want to deliver the best care, but they are in an almost impossible situation. Without safety-critical limits on the number of patients nursing staff are responsible for, patients will continue to be put in danger. Nurse-to-patient ratios must be enshrined in law or the cycle that fails everyone will only continue.”
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Notes to editors
The study found ‘excessive turnover of nurses and doctors not only may generate a temporary staff shortage, thus increasing demand pressures on healthcare, but also compromise the working conditions of the remaining hospital staff and the continuity of patient care.
For instance, high turnover might lead to low staff-to-patient ratios, which correlate with worse patient care and have motivated the adoption of nurse-to-patients safety ratios in several countries to improve patient safety.’
The researchers found that a one standard deviation increase in nurse turnover is associated with 35 additional deaths per 100,000 hospital admissions within 30 days.
