Nurse Staffing and Patient Outcomes in Hemodialysis Units: A Literature Review

Abstract

The hemodialysis unit manager must be able to ensure that the high-quality services are provided to ensure patient outcomes. Several previous studies have shown that nurse staffing is one of the components that needs to be considered to improve patient outcomes, but this has not been specifically proven in hemodialysis units. The study aims to determine the effect of nurse staffing and patient outcomes in hemodialysis units. This research is a literature review where the process of article searches is carried out through the Pubmed, Emerald, Science direct and Google Scholar electronic databases using certain some keyword combinations in articles published from 2012-2022. The review process used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, and three research articles were analyzed. Results of study show that there is no significant relationship between the ratio of patient to nurses with various patient outcomes in assessed from the Standardized Hospitalization Ratio (SHR), Standardized Mortality Rate (SMR) and Standardized Readmission Ratio (SRR). Moreover, this study provides no evidence that the ratio of patients to nurses affects patient outcomes. Comparative studies with clear staffing parameters are needed to prove this issue.