The article “The effect of nurse staffing on patient safety outcomes: A cross-sectional survey” is an original scholarly research involving human subjects, conducted by Wang et al (2020). The authors clearly possess the necessary qualifications for performing the study, having Doctorate and Master’s degrees in Medicine and practicing as registered nurses in Beijing School of Nursing. The title precisely explains the focus of the study, highlighting that nurse staffing as the primary variable and stating that its effects will be explored in connection with patient safety. Furthermore, the study’s type is included in the title, delineating that a cross-sectional survey method was implemented to gather the relevant data. Given that the authors mention this information in the title, clearly defining the area of research and the chosen strategies, the article draws the reader’s attention and elicits interest in learning what links between the phenomena have been established.
The article’s abstract also demonstrates the quality of the study, including the most crucial information in the form of concise statements. As such, the aim, background, methods, results, conclusions, and implications for Nursing Management are highlighted in bold font, making it easier for the reader to locate specific data. After that, the study’s setting and sample are shortly summarized, and the attained findings are presented in a clear manner, including the most signficant ideas. It is also notable that the authors have incorporated the study’s implications into the abstract, allowing the audience to understand how the research’s outcomes contribute to the area of nursing management and patient safety. Overall, it is evident that the abstract is well-structured and includes all of the information needed to define the core ideas of the exploration.
The described article presents inadequate nurse staffing as the problem, perfectly demonstrating how issues with securing necessary numbers of nurses can negatively influence the patient safety standards. As such, the authors explain the background of the problem by excellently exploring the current scientific literature on the topic, highlighting how complications regarding low nurse numbers have been reported to correlate with worse patient outcomes and increased mortality. Considering that patient welfare and safety is the core goal of nursing, addressing the aspects that might impede healthcare efficiency is a vital topic for scholarly research. From this perspective, it becomes crucial to address the factors behind nurse staffing that might improve patient outcomes, as well as analyze the nurse staffing’s significance for diminishing the overall rates of failure in hospital units.
However, based on the literature exploration, the authors argue that the structure of nursing units, in comparison with staffing nubers, has received little attention from the scholars. Although some studies report that unit organization is crucial for delivering adequate staffing, the connections between unit structure and patient outcomes remain unclear. Wang et al. (2020) do not provide an explicit problem question, but they state that both nursing unit structure and nurse numbers could be the factors decreasing the quality of patient outcomes. Following this idea, the authors declare that the purpose of this research is to examine how nurse staffing aspects, namely unit structure and numbers, can impact patient safety outcomes in the hospitals of China. Moreover, the claim that nursing structure is a valuable assessment element is supported by evidence from China’s Ministry of Health and studies on the organization of nursing units and their efficacy. Both of these sources suggest that nurses play different roles according to their expertise levels and professional positions, meaning that the adverse effects of low nurse numbers might be mediated by including more experienced nurses into the unit. Therefore, the authors’ propositions and research purpose are clearly justified by reputable evidence, contributing to the significance of the study.
Reference
Wang, L., Lu, H., Dong, X., Huang, X., Li, B., Wan, Q., & Shang, S. (2020). The effect of nurse staffing on patient-safety outcomes: A cross-sectional survey. Journal of nursing management, 28(7), 1758–1766. Web.