RN4CAST

Nurse Forecasting: Human Resources Planning in Nursing

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Current human resources planning models in nursing are unreliable and ineffective as they consider volumes, but ignore effects on quality in patient care. The project RN4CAST aims innovative forecasting methods by addressing not only volumes, but quality of nursing staff as well as quality of patient care. RN4CAST is a consortium of 15 partners that will quantify in 11 European countries-Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, UK - important unmeasured factors in forecasting models including how features of hospital work environments and qualifications of the nurse workforce impact on nurse recruitment, retention, productivity and patient outcomes. Three partners outside Europe - China, South Africa, and Botswana- provide additional perspectives. Innovative elements of the project include unique measures of workplace dynamics and patient outcomes. Nurse workforce planning initiatives at national and European levels will be reviewed and newly collected data added to enhance accuracy for nurse workforce management. Data collection focuses on general hospitals, which employ the majority of nurses, account for the largest number of medical errors and comprise the largest share of national health expenditures. Each European partner will conduct a study of 20 to 50 hospitals depending on country size yielding information on more than 350 hospitals including surveys from over 50,000 nurses and outcomes of tens of thousands of patients. European partners were selected by geographic distribution, membership duration in the EU, research expertise and availability of patient discharge data. University of Pennsylvania, USA, will contribute specialized research expertise derived from previous international research. RN4CAST will be the largest nurse workforce study ever conducted in Europe, will add to accuracy of forecasting models and generate new approaches to more effective management of nursing resources in Europe.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Managing resources effectively is crucial for any organisation's success. In hospitals, this involves nursing quality as well as volume.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Current models of nursing resources planning largely omit the quality of nursing staff and of resulting patient care. To deal with this shortcoming, the 'Nurse forecasting: human resources planning in nursing' (RN4CAST) project is conducting Europe's biggest-ever nurse workforce study to improve the accuracy of forecasting models and offer more effective approaches to management of EU nursing resources. The 15-member consortium will study what effects hospital nurse staffing, skill mix, educational make-up, and quality of the nurse-work environment have on hospital mortality, failure to rescue, quality of care and patient satisfaction.

The project brings together partners from 11 EU countries plus Botswana, China, South Africa and the US. Factors that have until now not been measured in forecasting models will be quantified in hospital settings: these include hospital work environment and the impact of nursing qualifications on recruitment, retention, productivity and patient outcomes. The focus of this three-year study has so far been on general hospitals.

The first phase, to June 2010, was devoted to developing measurement tools, validation tests and collecting data. Data were gathered from nurse, patient and organisational surveys and routinely collected hospital discharge information. Surveys were conducted in 459 hospitals to measure characteristics of the hospital nurse workforce, their future employment goals and their views on the work volume and quality of care given. The patient survey was performed in 8 countries and with data generated from some 11;000 patients. The organisational survey collected information on the workplace's profile as well as detailed information on relevant colleagues.

Discharge data, covering an entire year, will be used to determine other outcomes like hospital mortality and failure to rescue. This will create a database of millions of patients that, in the second phase up to December 2011, will be used to investigate the original project objective and improve related forecasting and planning for policy breakthroughs.