Positive link between graduate-level nursing care and reduction in patient mortality
Posted 07 July 2016 - 11:32
Researchers have identified that having 70% of nursing care provided by graduate nurses improves patient mortality.
A study in seven public hospitals in Qatar looked at direct patient care provided by 5,296 nurses during four months in 2015.
The researchers, from UK, Australian and Qatari institutions, looked at whether the nurses were graduates or not and classified graduates as those who held a baccalaureate degree (the equivalent of a bachelor’s level degree in the UK) or higher in a health related subject.
Specific incidences
Co-author Roger Watson, from the University of Hull, said previous studies have worked out the level of graduate nurses in hospitals as a proportion of the workforce and compared this with patient deaths.
But he added: ‘In our study we could link each specific incidence of nursing care on the electronic records system so we knew which nurse had given which episode of care and then we could check if they were graduates or not.’
Patients of any age who were admitted to any ward for at least one day were included in the study, except for patients admitted to emergency departments.
During the study period, 254 (3.47%) patients died.
Valuable training
After adjusting for confounding variables, the research shows that mortality fell below 2% when 44% of nursing care was provided by graduate level nurses.
It then fell to 1% when around 70% of nursing care was given by graduates.
After that point, the patient mortality remained at around 0.8% and the researchers concluded that above 70%, ‘graduate-ness confers no appreciable benefits in terms of mortality’.
The researchers said the study confirmed the conclusion of most previous studies in showing the value of graduate nurse training to the health system.
They added that it raised important questions about the optimum ratio of graduate nurses in the workforce.
Further information
The study is published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing and is available here