Staffing in Nursing: A Key to Quality Nursing Care

Quality nursing care is the buzz word of any healthcare institution.Patients today seek an accredited hospital with advanced care for treatment.With the different emerging accreditation standards for reviewing hospitals, the quality of nursing care must be high to satisfy these standards.Staffing plays a major role in achieving quality patient care.Patient satisfaction and staff satisfaction reflect the quality of nursing care provided to patients. Human resource management with safe staffing becomes the keyword in ensuring the standards of care. Safe staffing includes the appropriate number as well as the appropriate skill mix of the nurses. Evidence suggests that it is not only the number, but the experience and the skill of the nurse that is important to ensure quality patient care. To cut down on the cost spent on human resources, the management needs to focus on the appropriate skill mix of staff to ensure comprehensive care of patients. Safe staffing includes a good recruitment policy, sound deployment of nursing staff, prompt orientation and training, continuing nursing education, and regular performance appraisal with a feedback system to improve the quality and retention of nurses. The myth about quality demands cost needs to be broken to agree that cost-effectiveness and efficiency of workers result in improved quality.Understanding the influence of staffing on the quality of patient care will enable administrators to ensure adequate staffing for better patient care outcomes.This paper emphasizes the need for safe staffing to improve quality patient care.