| Abstract: | 4 experiments were conducted in an ongoing hospital setting to test the hypothesis that increasing the amount and quality of nursing care would produce improvements in patient welfare. Changes introduced on experimental wards consisted of increasing the size of the nursing staff, conducting inservice-education programs, and combining increased staffing and inservice education. With the exception of a reduction in patient complaints during 1 experiment, no improvement in patient welfare was produced. Results suggest that there is a limit to the contribution which nursing can make to patient welfare and that this limit is much closer to the existing level of care than was formerly thought. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
