Cameron Wells, GSET2 General Surgery Registrar at Health New Zealand, Aotearoa New Zealand Representative at Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, shared on LinkedIn:
“When a patient deteriorates after surgery, the nurse on the ward is often the first person to notice it.
We looked at 223,415 surgical admissions in New Zealand public hospitals between 2022 and 2024.
More than four in ten surgical ward shifts had fewer nursing care hours available than patients were assessed to need.
A one-nurse reduction in median staffing per shift during admission was associated with 13% higher adjusted odds of death within 90 days. Lower staffing was also associated with more complications and a greater risk of dying after a complication.
Our modelling estimated that correcting the staffing shortfalls we observed could be associated with 182 fewer postoperative deaths each year. An important caveat: this is an estimate from observational data, not the result of a staffing intervention.
I hope the paper adds something useful to a question that matters every day on surgical wards: do we have enough staff to provide the care our patients need?
For those who have some influence over staffing, budgets, hospital operations or clinical services, I hope these findings are acted on.
We should identify where staffing falls short, respond when it does, and check whether those changes improve patient outcomes.
To which, Andrew Beggs, Research Director of Somatic Cancer at NHS Central and South Genomics, added:
“This is an important problem. Interesting to see that understaffing is a problem in the NZ healthcare system as well as ours.
Lots to take away with this paper but this will be very useful evidence to ensure safe staffing.
Surgical patients have high dependency needs and getting more staff can only help this. ”
Title: Association of Surgical Ward Nurse Staffing With Postoperative Mortality and Failure to Rescue
Authors: Cameron I. Wells, Kate Henderson, Chris Varghese, Greg O’Grady, Luke Boyle, Ian P. Bissett, Doug Campbell.
Other articles about Healthcare in New Zealand on OncoDaily.