Adverse nurse outcomes: correlation to nurses' workload, staffing, and shift rotation in Kuwaiti hospitals

Skipping tea/coffee breaks, feeling responsible for more patients than they could safely care for, inadequate help available, inadequate time to document care, verbal abuse by a patient or a visitor, and concern about quality of care were the major reported adverse outcomes related to short staffing.

Abstract

This study was conducted to identify adverse outcomes to nurses in relation to their daily patient load, nursing care activities, staffing, and shift rotation. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from medical and surgical nurses (N = 784). Skipping tea/coffee breaks (95%), feeling responsible for more patients than they could safely care for (87%), inadequate help available (86%), inadequate time to document care (80%), verbal abuse by a patient or a visitor (77%), and concern about quality of care (71%) were the major reported adverse outcomes related to short staffing, increased patient load, and increased nursing care activities.