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Nurses' Education Level Linked to Death Rate

CHICAGO -- Hospitals' death rates are higher when the nurses' education levels are lower, a study of surgical patients found.

In a review of data from 168 Pennsylvania hospitals, surgery patients' death rates were nearly twice as high when the percentage of nurses with bachelor's degrees was low, University of Pennsylvania researchers said.

Low levels of education, coupled with low nurse staffing levels, could translate to thousands of preventable deaths nationwide each year, the researchers said.

The findings suggest that recruiting nurses with four-year bachelor's degrees instead of two or three years of education "may lead to substantial improvements in quality of care," they said.

Better-educated nurses tend to be more proficient in critical thinking, said lead author Linda Aiken, a University of Pennsylvania nursing professor.

"In most university programs, nurses are being reared alongside of physicians in medical schools and so they have the opportunity early in their education to interact with physicians and develop those skills that are ever important in critical circumstances," she said.

The percentages of more highly educated nurses vary at hospitals nationwide and ranged from zero to 77 percent at the hospitals studied.

The patients studied underwent such common operations as knee replacements, appendectomies and gallbladder removal. Hospitals with fewer than 10 percent of nurses with bachelor's degrees had death rates of nearly 3 percent for such patients, compared with a 1.5 percent death rate at hospitals where more than 70 percent of nurses had bachelor's degrees.

"Some 4 million procedures like the ones we studied are performed in U.S. hospitals every year, yielding a substantial number of preventable deaths," Aiken said.

The findings appear in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

The results were challenged by the National Association for Associate Degree Nursing, which represents community colleges offering two-year programs.

"The conclusions are not supported by the data, and there are serious questions about the flawed methodology," the group's president, Sharon Bernier, said in a statement.
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Degree options
Registered-nurse degrees are offered by two-year community colleges, three-year hospital diploma programs and four-year bachelor of science programs.

Nationwide data from 2001 show that 61 percent of new registered nurses came from associate-degree programs, 36 percent from bachelor's degree programs and 3 percent from hospital diploma programs -- which educated the bulk of U.S. nurses 50 years ago.




— Associated Press
Nurses' education linked to death rate
Indianapolis Star
2003-09-24
http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/6/077433-1696-010.html

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