Nurse staffing and education and hospital mortality in nine European countries: a retrospective observational study (14 May 2014)

Summary

Hospital nurse staffing, and the proportion of nurses with bachelor’s education, are associated with significantly fewer deaths after routine surgery, according to research published in the Lancet.

A team of researchers conducted the study across nine European countries and found that a better educated nursing workforce reduced unnecessary deaths. Every 10%increase in the number of bachelor’s degree educated nurses within a hospital is associated with a 7% decline in patient mortality.

Patients in hospitals, in which 60% of nurses had bachelor’s degrees and nurses cared for an average of six patients, had almost 30% lower mortality than patients in hospitals in which only 30% of nurses had bachelor’s degrees and nurses cared for an average of eight patients. The study shows that, in hospitals in England, an average only of 28% of bedside care nurses had bachelor’s degrees, among the lowest in Europe, which averaged 45%.

The study shows that increasing the production of graduate nurses is necessary if the NHS is to realise the potential of lower patient mortality and fewer adverse patient outcomes.