Patient Safety Incidents and Nursing Workload

Abstract

Objective:to identify the relationship between the workload of the nursing team and the occurrence of patient safety incidents linked to nursing care in a public hospital in Chile. Method:quantitative, analytical, cross-sectional research through review of medical records. The estimation of workload in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) was performed using the Therapeutic Interventions Scoring System (TISS-28) and for the other services, we used the nurse/patient and nursing assistant/patient ratios. Descriptive univariate and multivariate analysis were performed. For the multivariate analysis we used principal component analysis and Pearson correlation. Results:879 post-discharge clinical records and the workload of 85 nurses and 157 nursing assistants were analyzed. The overall incident rate was 71.1%. It was found a high positive correlation between variables workload (r = 0.9611 to r = 0.9919) and rate of falls (r = 0.8770). The medication error rates, mechanical containment incidents and self-removal of invasive devices were not correlated with the workload. Conclusions:the workload was high in all units except the intermediate care unit. Only the rate of falls was associated with the workload.

The nursing workload assessed through the Nursing Activities Score as a predictor for the occurrence of ventilator-associated pneumonia in an adult intensive care unit

“…[34] The results of this research are in line with results verified in other studies. [30,[34][35][36] In one of these studies, carried out with 195 patients, 43 (22%) developed HAI and, as in the present study, an excessive nursing workload was identified as a risk factor for HAI (OR: 11.41; p .019). [30] A metaanalysis, which included 38 studies, showed that in only 7 (18%) of the cases studied, it was not possible to observe a statistically significant relationship between variables that measure nursing team size and HAI rates.…”

When safety climate is not enough: Examining the moderating effects of psychosocial hazards on nurse safety performance

“…A heavy workload has been found to be one of the most consistent stressors in the nursing profession (McVicar, ; Moore, Kuhrik, Kuhrik, & Katz, ; Tyler & Cushway, ) and has also been found to be related to anxiety, frustration (Spector, ), and burnout (Greenglass, Burke, & Fiksenbaum, ). In addition, work overload has been found to have a negative impact on healthcare workers' quality of care (Shirom, Nirel, & Vinokur, ) and has been associated with higher patient safety incidents (Carlesi, Padilha, Toffoletto, Henriquez‐Roldán, & Juan, ).…”

The Relationship between the Nursing Work Load and the Quality of Nursing Care at a Selected Hospital in Menofya Governorate

“…In addition to that, this result was supported by the result of [30][31][32] ,whose results indicated that nurses' workload have been related to nurse assessed quality of care as it was an important determinant of quality of care. Also they reported that there was a direct relationship between nurses' workload and nurse-reported quality of care Moreover, this result was supported by [33][34][35][36] , whose results revealed that nursing work load affects care quality and mortality as it has strong relation with the quality of the care output that provided by the nurses so quality of nursing care can be improved by balanced distribution of workforce relative to workload in different shifts.…”