The lead author of the study from the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia states that there is "growing evidence [suggesting] that nurse staffing affects the quality of care in hospitals, but little is known about whether the educational composition of registered nurses (RNs) in hospitals is related to patient outcomes. "

As such, the authors examined the relationship of hospital nurses educated at the bachelor's level of education or higher with hospital death rates.

This cross sectional study of a large number of surgical patients (over 200,000) from over a 100 hospitals in Pennsylvania demonstrated that there was a wide variation of proportions of nurses having advanced degrees across hospital systems, ranging from 0% to 77%.

After adjusting for a large number of other factors, including surgeon charactersitics, it was noted that a mere "10% increase in the proportion of nurses holding a bachelor's degree was associated with a 5% decrease in both the likelihood of patients dying within 30 days of admission and the odds of failure to rescue".

This study is striking, as it demonstrates that "in hospitals with higher proportions of nurses educated at the [bachelor's] level or higher that surgical patients experienced lower mortality rates and failure-to-rescue rates."

Editor's Note:

In a economic outlook with a shrinking base to fund hospital nursing staff appropriately, more and more hospitals are looking at less educated staff to take care of patients in order to reduce payroll. This study may support the contention that a higher level of nursing education may actually improve patient outcomes and hospital death rates. Needless to say, there are a lot of nurses who lack bachelor's degrees but have excellent experiences who may not necessarily fit the contention made in this particular study.

Reference:
Educational levels of hospital nurses and surgical patient mortality, JAMA 290(12):1617-23