UCC School of Nursing and Midwifery Annual Report 2020

Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery, UCC

Impact – Programme of Research on Safe Nurse Staffing and Skill-Mix

National University of Ireland, Galway, the research team, led by Professor Jonathan Drennan, are using multiple research approaches to measure the impact of safe staffing policy on the quality of care. The research is unique in that the team works closely with the Department of Health, the Health Service Executive, nursing and healthcare assistants’ representative unions and clinical staff in hospital settings. This approach ensures that key policy makers, healthcare leaders and nurses and HCAs are involved not only in determining the development of policy for safe nurse staffing, but also the outcomes of the research and how this impacts on professional practice. The Team: The research team has undertaken research in medical, surgical and emergency settings and has recently received a research grant of ¤1 Million to extend the research into nursing home and community settings. The research team at UCC are Professor Jonathan Drennan (Principal Investigator), Dr Vera McCarthy, Professor Josephine Hegarty, Professor Corina Naughton, Dr Nicola Cornally, Professor Patricia Leahy-Warren, Dr Helen Mulcahy, Dr Aileen Murphy, Dr Ashling Murphy, Ms Croia Loughnane, Mr. Gearoid Kelly.

A research team at the School of Nursing and Midwifery is having a national impact on the development of policy documents on safe nurse staffing and skill-mix for medical, surgical, emergency and specialist settings in hospitals in Ireland. Funded by the Health Research Board and the Department of Health, the research is providing vital evidence on the impact that safe nurse staffing has on the provision of quality patient care as well as nurse and organisational outcomes. In Ireland, there is currently concern regarding the ability to recruit and retain nurses within the healthcare sector. There is also a need to match staffing requirements that are based on patient need. We know from previous research that safe nurse staffing levels are required to ensure that patients receive high quality care. Previous research has shown that there is a relationship between staffing levels and outcomes such as mortality, missed care, job satisfaction and staff turnover. Using a systematic approach, the research team are ensuring that staffing levels meet patient acuity and dependency levels; that is, the right nurse, is in the right place, at the right time. Working in partnership with the University of Southampton, the University of Technology Sydney and the

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