background: The nursing workforce is critical to improving patient outcomes. Without adequate
evidence to guide decision making, restructuring of the nursing workforce to meet increasingly
complex patient care needs in the context of registered nurse shortages might fail to produce
desired outcomes.
Objective: To develop a suite of nursing-sensitive outcome indicators for monitoring the safety
of multi-day adult medical and surgical patients associated with nurse workloads and nursing
workforce models.
Design: A feasibility study was conducted.
Setting: Adult acute metropolitan public hospitals in Western Australia.
Data sources: Patient data for testing the suite were sourced from 2006 to 2010 coded discharge
morbidity abstracts.
Method: Indicator development followed the American Nurses Association (2011) approach:
clarifying indicator scope and purpose; determining selection criteria; reviewing the literature
for potential indicators; identifying data sources; review by experts; documenting each
indicator; and determining baselines.