Baccalaureate education in nursing and patient outcomes Essay

/in /by

Give a good and positive Comment related with this argument…
Baccalaureate education in nursing and patient outcomes Essay
In a study published in the October 2014 issue of Medical Care, researcher Olga Yakusheva from the University of Michigan and her colleagues found that a 10% increase in the proportion of baccalaureate-prepared nurses on hospital units was associated with lowering the odds of patient mortality by 10.9%. Titled “Economic Evaluation of the 80% Baccalaureate Nurse Workforce Recommendation,” the study authors also found that increasing the amount of care provided by BSNs to 80% would result in significantly lower readmission rates and shorter lengths of stay. These outcomes translate into cost savings that would more than off-set expenses for increasing the number of baccalaureate-prepared nurses in hospital settings (Yakusheva, 2014).
In the February 2013 issue of the Journal of Nursing Administration, Mary Blegen and colleagues published findings from a cross-sectional study of 21 University Healthsystem Consortium hospitals which found that hospitals with a higher percentage of RNs with baccalaureate or higher degrees had lower congestive heart failure mortality, decubitus ulcers, failure to rescue, and postoperative deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism and shorter length of stay (Blegan, 2013).
 
From my real life experience I cannot agree with these findings, but I’m sure the studies and numbers speak for themselves. I have never witnessed anything bad happening to a patient as a result of a RN having an ADN instead of BSN. When working together in the hospital, you really don’t know who has a BSN and who only has ADN. We share one common goal, which is taking care of our patients.
 
References:
Blegen, M.A., Goode, C.J., Park, S.H., Vaughn, T. & Spetz, J. (2013, February). Baccalaureate education in nursing and patient outcomes. Journal of Nursing Administration, 43(2), 89-94.
Yakusheva, O., Lindrooth, R. & Weiss, M. (2014, October). Economic evaluation of the 80% baccalaureate nurse workforce recommendation: A patient-level analysis. Medical Care, 52(10), 864-869