Nurse-patient ratios will save lives: QNU

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NURSES fear patients are being put at risk because there’s no nurse-to-patient ratio in Queensland’s hospital wards.

QUEENSLAND Nurses’ Union secretary Beth Mohle says public and private hospitals can staff wards, including emergency and intensive care, at whatever level they deem adequate.

“We are concerned the lack of nurse ratios is putting patients at great risk,” she said in a statement on Wednesday. Patient safety researcher Professor Linda Aiken says her research in the US, UK, China and Europe has found health care services with lower nurse-to-patient ratios and better skilled staff had fewer patient deaths. Prof Aiken, who is speaking at a QNU symposium on Wednesday, says the US publishes online hospital performance indicators and the ones with more nurses per patient consistently outperform the other hospitals. “What we found in the US, the UK and about every other country we studied is that there is a seven-fold difference in mortality rates between hospitals,” she said. “Nurse staffing levels were dramatically different between these hospitals and more nurses means lower mortality. “When you start telling the public there is a seven-fold difference in the likelihood they could die, you really get their attention on nurse numbers.” Dr Aiken is the Director of the United States’ Centre for Health Outcomes and Policy Research and professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently won the Institute of Medicine’s 2014 Gustav O. Lienhard Award for her research into patient care.