New research highlights the alarming impact of nursing shortages on patient safety and recovery, emphasising more extended hospital stays and increased mortality rates.
Globally, surgeons perform over 300 million operations every year. However, concerns about the quality of care, avoidable complications, extended hospital stays and costly readmissions are rising. Shockingly, up to 55% of surgical site infections are preventable.
While safety initiatives have traditionally focused on checklists, staff training and teamwork improvement, this study sheds light on the critical role of adequate nursing staff. Understaffing of registered nurses and nursing assistants has been directly linked to higher risks of post-surgical complications and adverse outcomes.
Nurses are integral to the well-being and safety of surgical patients.
A comprehensive review of 44 studies published in the British Journal of Surgery by Oxford University Press confirmed that higher nursing levels correlate with lower 30-day mortality rates in surgical patients.
Yet, most research has historically examined staffing on a broad hospital level, outside specific surgical wards.
This new study, conducted by researchers from the University of Southampton, analysed data from over 213,000 surgical admissions across four NHS hospitals in England between 2015 and 2020.
It found that nursing shortages increase the risk of readmission by 2.3%, and shortages of nursing assistants raise it by 1.4%.
Other serious complications also spiked with inadequate staffing, including a 4.8% rise in deep vein thrombosis, a 5.7% increase in pneumonia cases, and a 6.4% jump in pressure ulcers.
Perhaps most concerning, the study found that each day of insufficient registered nurse staffing raised the relative mortality risk by 9.2%, while low nursing assistant coverage heightened this risk by 10.3%.
Lead author Paul Meredith said: ‘The safety of surgical patients is paramount, and while we often focus on systems, protocols, and procedural safeguards, this study highlights that workload and staffing levels are key contributors to patient risk. Ensuring sufficient nurse staffing in wards is essential to protect the lives of those undergoing and recovering from surgery.’
The full paper, Associations between outcomes for surgical admissions and nurse staffing – a longitudinal study using routine data from English Acute Hospitals, is available here.
