| Hanju Lee | 2 Articles |
PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to examine trends in number of nursing staff and skill mix. METHODS Nursing staff and skill mix were measured using the number of nursing staff including nurse aids and registered nurses per bed. Descriptive and panel data regression analyses were conducted using data on long-term care hospitals which included yearly series data from 2006 to 2010 for 119 hospitals. RESULTS The number of nursing staff per bed increased significantly but percentage of registered nurses decreased significantly from 2007 to 2010. The regression model explained this variation as much as 35% and 44%. CONCLUSION The results showed that in long-term care hospitals there were more nurse aids employed instead of registered nurses after the implemention of differentiated inpatient nursing fees. Thus clarifying the job descriptions for nurses and nurse aids is needed and appropriate hospital incentive policies should be implemented. Citations Citations to this article as recorded by
PURPOSE
The objective of this study was to analyze the effects of medical staffing level as bed-to-medical staff ratio on patient outcomes as length of stay (LOS) among hospitals in Korea. METHODS Two hundred and fifty one hospitals participated in the study between January and March 2008. Data for the study was requested by an electronic data interchange from the Health Insurance Review Agency in 2008. In data analysis, SPSS WIN 15.0 program was utilized for descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients, and multiple regression. RESULTS The mean score for length of stay was 13.6 days. The mean of operating bed-to-nurse ratio was 7.93:1. The predicting factors for LOS were bed-to-nurse's aide ratio, bed-to doctor's ratio, severely ill patient rate, and hospital type. These factors explained 28.9% of the variance in patient outcomes. CONCLUSION This study results indicate that the relationship between medical staffing level and patient outcomes is important in the improvement of the quality of patient care. Thus, improvements in the quality of the nurse practice environment could improve patient outcomes for hospitalized patients. Citations Citations to this article as recorded by
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