Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
3-2020
Document Type
DNP Project
Department
Nursing
Degree Name
Doctor of Nursing Practice
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Roneisa Matero
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Molly Kuhle
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Faisal Aboul-Enein
Abstract
There is a lack of consensus about the staffing matrix across nursing and especially in emergency
nursing, where variations in arrival patterns, acuity, social determinants of health, and length of stay all impact the workload of emergency nurses. The objective of this paper was to determine if government-mandated staffing ratios had a greater impact on patient experience at hospitals in California than staffing based on hours per patient visit at hospitals in Massachusetts. Seven hospitals from the state of California with government-mandated nurse-to-patient ratios were compared to 7 hospitals from Massachusetts that did not have mandated staffing ratios to determine if there was any significant difference in patient experience. There was no significant difference between the chosen hospitals when comparing door-to-provider time, door-to- disposition time, left-without-being-seen rates, and Press Ganey likelihood-to-recommend scores. Determining a staffing matrix is difficult, and California law sets rigid patient-to-nurse ratios that evidence does not support. The exact science of determining the correct ratio of nurses to patients in the emergency department should be evaluated by experts in the field of emergency nursing and should not be left to the government. A direct correlation between government- mandated ratios and nurse-sensitive outcomes could not be determined.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Marcoux, Jessica L., "How Do Nurse-to-Patient Ratios in the Emergency Department Impact Patient Experience?" (2020). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 198.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/198