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Now Available: References
Project Purpose: To enhance patient care delivery by improving the retention of nurses.
This innovative project will add to the understanding of how hospitals especially those in areas that face challenges in recruiting and retaining nurses--can implement and sustain research-based changes in the organization of nursing work to enhance patient care and nursing work. The project has potential to serve as a model for replication in hospitals across the nation.
Objectives: This project will implement a series of capacity building activities to (1) increase collaboration and communication among nurses and other health care professionals, (2) increase nurse involvement in the organizational and clinical decision making processes, and (3) increase cultural sensitivity and competency.
Project Rationale: Change is needed in the nursing work environment.
For decades the U.S. healthcare system has been afflicted with cyclical nurse shortages and associated concerns about the quality of patient care. Strategies to attenuate such crises usually consist of short-term initiatives such as salary increases, sign-on bonuses, increased recruiting efforts, and simply “making more nurses�. For more than 20 years, research has noted that certain organizational features which can be altered are associated with quality patient outcomes and nurse recruitment and retention. These organizational features include collaboration and communication with colleagues and nurse involvement in decisions about patient care and nursing work. Recently the Institute of Medicine (IOM) called for implementation of these same features to transform the nursing work environment to keep patients safe (IOM, 2003). While we know what “works� little is known about how hospitals can successfully “do it,� and less is known about “how to make it stick.� We propose that it is time to use what research tells us to address the root causes of recurrent nurse shortages and promote enhanced quality of patient care.
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