This article describes nurse staffing in 330 critical care, medical surgical, and step-down units in 52 acute care California hospitals that was reported over nine quarters between April 1998 and June 2000. These data, representing more than 3 million patient days of care, comprise the largest prospective descriptive sample of nurse staffing, using standardized indicators, reported to date. These data are especially timely as the profession, policy makers, and regulators in California and the nation respond to the legislative mandate to establish nurse-to-patient staffing ratios that ensure patient safety and develop methods to monitor the impact of ratios on the quality and outcomes of patient care. Findings reveal relative stability over the nine calendar quarters, no significant differences between groups of hospitals stratified by using average daily census to cluster by hospital size and wide variation in staffing across hospitals within the same unit type categories.
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