There have been many studies done on nursing. But it was done slowly as issues arose. From 1955-65 nursing changed from functional nursing to team nursing. 1975-85 it changed from team nursing to Primary nursing/total patient care. In 1990s changed focus to cost and efficiency and since 2000 we have a shortage crisis.

There was lot of research done with a lot of inconsistent results about RN hours and patient satisfaction, mortality, morbidity and the function of nurses. But despite the avalanche of research it was difficult to change things because the research was not done well. In 1999 the question was again brought up, what is the effect of nurse staffing and the shortage of RNs on patients? Between 1999 to 2006 jobs will grow 23%. How much nursing care is available for patients? Since the 1980s the hours had changed form 6 hours to 8 hours a day for nurses in hospitals. But patients are in hospitals less so therefore less nursing care given and a study found that hospitals

Nurses also agree that shortage causes problems. 85% said it decreased quality of care and 65% said it decreases the detection of infection. The implication of this research is: staffing RN proportion and skill mix hours is related to adverse effect occurrences in patients.

Studies by Blegen et al in 1998 showed that the more RN skill mix the lower the medication error (85%) and less falls.

Other studies have reported that only 45% of medicine errors are reported there by making studies less accurate. Only 85% of falls are reported. Studies cannot rely on volunteer information but someone can also not always watch the nurses.

were hiring less clinicians over other hospital employees (Aiken & Anderson et al).

Another problem with the research was how do you measure nurse staffing, (what is it? Metric? What is the best?), and how do you measure the quality of patient care? Some ways were to study the mortality rates, complication, and adverse occurrences. Kovner (1998, 2002) study found that the more RN hours the less adverse effects like pneumonia and UTI etc. Schultz et al

Some common words found in the essay are:
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