Are Rates of Bed Occupancy and Nurse Absenteeism Significant Risk Factors for Hospital Acquired Clostridium difficile-Associated Disease?
this occurred concurrently with the introduction of policies aimed at improving financial efficiency within the National Health Service. These included reductions in the numbers of hospital in-patient beds and decreases in the length of stay. Mismatches in these changes have contributed to a health service that can be typically described as high throughput with elevated rates of bed occupancy and nurse absenteeism. Objective: To establish if bed occupancy rates and nurse absenteeism are significant risk factors for CDAD in adult medical and surgical in-patients. Methods: University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) NHS Trust is an 1800 bed, three sites, mixed secondary/tertiary medical school NHS hospital. A retrospective cohort study was carried out using a dataset constructed from demographic and pathology records of adult patients admitted to medical or surgical wards in UHL between April 2006 and April 2008 and contemporaneous staff records. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression mo
