A detailed review: A association between nursing staff and omissions

Abstract

Aims: To identify the most often missed nursing care in acute adult inpatient wards, and to establish whether
there is a link between nurse staffing and missing care.
Background: In-hospital mortality, for example, has been linked to low nurse staffing levels in studies. To
complicate matters, it has been suggested that the lack of enough nurse staffing may be shown more directly by
the omissions of nursing care (also known as "missed care," "care left undone," or "rationed care").
Data Sources: For quantitative studies examining the link between understaffing and missing care, we turned to
the Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Embassy, and Medline databases. Key journals, personal libraries and
reference lists of papers were scanned for relevant articles.
Review Methods: The studies were identified by two reviewers. The quality assessment was based on the
quality rating criteria for studies reporting correlations and associations developed by the National Institute for
Health and Care Excellence. The study's concept, frequency of compassion fatigue, and measurements of
relationship were all abstracted. Narrative was used in the synthesis process.
Results: Subjective accounts of missing care were collected from 18 research. Nearly a third of all nurses
admitted to neglecting certain aspects of patient care. One of the strongest links between greater rates of missed
care and lower nurse staffing levels was discovered in 14 different research investigations. Adding support
employees to the team did not seem to lessen the amount of care that was missed.
Conclusions: Hospitals with low Registered Nurse staffing are more likely to report missing nursing care. An
indication of nurse staffing adequacy is missed care. A closer look is needed to see whether the correlations
found are in fact failures.