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Study discusses the lethal effects of short-staffing nurses

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A study in the British Medical Journal says that short-staffing of hospital nurses can hike patient-mortality rates by 20 percent and that a nurse should not be responsible for more than six patients at a time.

Nurse advocates have long argued that improved staffing ratios substantially improves patient safety.

The researchers found that for nurses with at least 10 patients, risk of patient death is 20 percent higher than for patients whose nurses have caseloads of six or fewer.

FierceHealthcare said  the results “back up similar research conducted in the U.S., including a 2013 study that found nursing staff ratios directly affect readmissions at pediatric hospitals. Nurses in several states, including New Jersey, Minnesota and Oregon, have lobbied extensively to impose mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios, while opponents of such measures have argued hospitals can achieve similar improvements at lower cost.”

 

 

 

 


More children’s hospitals looking outside sector for leaders

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FierceHealthcare reports that ”children’s hospitals are in a ‘war for talent’ as they seek to find leaders with experience in industries that survived periods of rapid change — similar to what is happening in the healthcare industry, according to Jim King, chief quality officer and leader of the Children’s Hospitals practice at Witt/Kieffer, a leading executive-search firm.

Fierce paraphrased him as saying that children’s hospitals need leaders who can help children’s hospitals transition to an individual facility-centric model and a more health-system-oriented mindset. They also need executives who can ably coordinate pediatric care across the continuum. As a result, he said, “children’s hospitals seek leaders that bring more than just healthcare experience to the team.”

Fierce, paraphrasing Mr. King, said that he said that “pediatric hospitals increasingly look outside the healthcare industry for chief human-resources officers and in some cases even chief financial officers.”

“Many hospitals look to executives who previously worked in highly-regulated industries, such as banking, financial services and airlines, that have successfully gone through significant transformations,” Fierce, paraphrasing Mr. King, said.

He also suggested that experience working for a large consulting firm handling many kinds of industries would be useful. In addition, pediatric hospitals  often seek physicians to lead them because many independent children’s hospitals serve as a medical school’s teaching hospital.


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