Why are nurses so important to the quality of care patients receive in hospitals?
A. People stay in the hospital because they need the care nurses provide: regular assessments and monitoring; timely and appropriate interventions, such as medication administration; and patient education prior to discharge. The patient care performed by nurses represents the core function of care provided in hospitals. When hospitals are staffed with too few registered nurses, patient complications and the length of hospital stays increases. Research that I conducted with Peter Buerhaus, Ph.D., of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, with data from nearly 800 hospitals and 6 million patients is widely cited to support this assertion (New England Journal of Medicine 2002). Other work done both before and after ours collectively provides a very strong base of evidence demonstrating the impact and value of nurses. Perhaps one reason nurse staffing is a problem is because nurses are undervalued. Unfortunately, nursing’s contribution to quality is not always recognized by health ca
