Impact of Nurse Patient Ratios on Patient Outcomes

Research PICO

INTRODUCTION
The aim of this research paper is toanalyze nurse patient ratios/skill and influence on patient
outcomes. The source of evidence used in this research paper is hand over for the nurses so that
quality of care of patients can be improved. Handover are useful for providing the guidelines
which are to be followed by the nurses and other staff of the hospital for taking care of the
patients in a better way. Furthermore, handover has used the framework of ISBAR which is the
abbreviated form of introduction, situation, background, assessment and recommendation. It is a
way to bring the feeling of inclusion in patients. Handover comprises complete information and
there are low chances of any information being missed out. Also, patience get the chance to you
ask questions or make changes in the current information by adding more to the existing one
based on the care andservices receiving in the hospital. Some of the tools like information
packages and pocket cards have been provided to the staff members for smooth process of
ISBAR.
The purpose of this research is to formulate some questions to be answered by the patients and
other interested parties. It is to be done for obtaining new and excellent knowledge for providing
clarity on the doubts. A method called PICO which stands for population, intervention,
comparison, and outcome and is applied for answering the clinical questions in order to gather
the answers along with some evidence. The PICO framework has been provided in figure 1
below. The GATE question in this research report is “how does nurse patient ratio impact the
outcomes of patient”. The database CINAHL has been used for obtaining and original research
paper which may provide suitable answers for the question asked through PICO. PICO is going

to be applied for undertaking the structural appraisal of the paper, methodology, search terms and
Adidas study of the paper with accuracy. Furthermore, this paper also includes design of the
study, limitation, significance and validity of the selected paper in relation to clinical practice
and PICO question.
Population Intervention Comparison Outcome
Hospital patients Nurse patient ratio
impact on patients
outcome
Positive impact
Negative impact
Neutral impact
Improve patient
outcome
METHODOLOGY
CINAHL database is the platform where top nursing and allied health literature are present.
Roles of comprises of nursing journals and publications from the prescribed authorities. With the
use of CINAHL database one can access to nursing dissertation, healthcare books, standards of
practice etc. It also provides access to legal cases, critical parts, clinical innovations and trials
and many more similar areas of knowledge. It is effective for the PICO question in the report.
Nurse patient ratio/skill was the first term put into the database for the search as it is included in
the intervention part of the above provided table. The next term was the population which was
the hospital patients and there was the number of results shown by the database for this particular
search term. The mechanism in the database is effective enough for showing search results
containing minimum one of the above searched terms.
Furthermore, third term on the search was the outcome portion of PICO question which is about
the enhanced outcome on the patient. In this case also, there was some results for this particular

term. After completing all the above step, picnic spot for this search was to go back into the
search history and to make a combination of the results of all the three searches terms. Apart
from this putting any additional work such as AND or IN reduced the results to a considerable
extent. There were some other limitations as well such as the only language accepted for
searching where’s English as putting the search term into any other language decrease the
number of results. Dev was another limitation on the article were published in the year 2015 to
2020 which put into n-7 articles. Peer reviewed article one of the criteria to be put in the search
which posed as a limitation. There was an individual assessment of every articles that was
chosen so that appropriate answer can be achieved for the PICO question.
RESULTS
Two questions were asked by Rose, Juliana and Adam in which one is “Does any fluctuations in
nurse patient ratio impact patients' outcomes?”This study was conducted by applying prospective
before and after a design based on quasi experiment was prepared in which measures of the test,
along with implementation of intervention were included. In addition to this measures of after
test comprised intense observation and surveys. Such type of studies are called pilot studies
which are the essential part of the research process. The main reason of conducting primary
research is to find the answers to the questions and it can be used in future for in depth study. It
helps in carrying number of activities such as determining the feasibility of recruitment,
examination of procedures, development of new methods, randomization and intervention. In
this current study, the PICO question which is based on nurse patient ratio has been studied
together with its impact on patient outcomes. Rose together with other participants formed the
main question with the application of PICO format. Also, with the use of PICO pattern, question