More recently, concerns about the changing nurse skill mix have led researchers to investigate associations between the incidence of nursing-sensitive outcomes and levels of nurse staffing [ 4- 8].
Little is known about turnover's association with most hospital and nursing unit characteristics, including nurse staffing level and registered nurse skill mix.
Of note is that it has recently been shown that hospital system related factors such as nurse staffing and nurse skill mix also influence the frequency of patient falls [ 44- 46].
These potentially preventable complications have been demonstrated to be sensitive to nursing that is, associated with modifiable characteristics of the nursing work environment, such as registered nurse skill mix and nurse burnout in both Europe 10 and America.
The RN4CAST-study aims to simulate scenarios to illustrate what happens to the quality of patient care and nursing outcomes when different aspects of the nursing workforce (nurse-to-patient ratio, nurse education, nurse skill mix, nursing work environment) are changed.
