In this pdf, the authors used nurse staffing and patient discharge data from many US hospitals to simulate three different nurse staffing approaches and to determine which of these options produced the greatest cost savings. After reading this article, use the information to answer these questions.
1. Assume that you are the manager of a 30 bed medical-surgical unit at a 220 bed community hospital. How can you use the findings from this article to help make staffing decisions?
2. What other data sources will you examine before making a decision to increase or decrease the nurse to patient ratio?