Authors

1Joan de Pedro Gómez, 1José Miguel Morales Asencio, 1Guillem Artigues Vives, 2Elena Gonzalo Jiménez, 3Juan Carlos Morilla Herrera

Position

¹Profesor de la Escuela de Enfermería y Fisioterapia de la Universidad de Las Islas Baleares.²Profesora de la Escuela Andaluza de Salud Pública (EASP).³Director de la Unidad de Residencias. Distrito Sanitario Málaga. Profesor colaborador en EASP.

Contact address

Universidad de Las Islas Baleares. Edificio Beatrui de Pinos. Despacho 31. Crta. Valldemosa, km 7,5. 07122 Palma de Mallorca (Islas Baleares)

Contact email: depedro@uib.es

Abstract

The debate on healthcare human resources can be carried out from different perspectives that are somewhat dogmatic and generally based on arguments that have been limitedly contrasted with research results.  Paradoxically, there are many studies in the field of healthcare delivery that demonstrate that an increase in nurses and their qualifications has an impact on healthcare outcomes, such as a decrease in mortality or length of hospital stay, amongst others.  In this article, the most relevant results derived from the research line that in the last 20 years has associated the number of nurses with hospital healthcare outcomes are presented.  The last published meta-analysis regarding this topic is emphasised given that it is where the principles to determining a causal relationship of this association are based.   Finally, there is a discussion regarding the positives and negative aspects of these results, as well as a contextualization of these results with the reality of our setting in Spain.  

Keywords:

hospital health care resources; nurse-patient ratios; healthcare outcomes; mortalityhospital stay

Versión en Español

Título:

Resultados de la atención hospitalaria y número de enfermeras: no es casualidad la cercanía a la causalidad