Health services research has led to exciting new findings about the critical importance
of the amount and type of nursing staff in nursing homes for improving the processes
and outcomes of care. This paper reviews recent theoretical and research issues and
outlines areas where research is needed. The nursing home research agenda for the
future needs to concentrate on: (1) the relationship between structural measures of
nursing (eg, staffing levels, education, turnover rates) and the outcomes and processes
of care; (2) adequate processes of care and ways to improve the reliability of clinical
outcome measures; (3) better ways to risk-adjust for resident characteristics; (4)
the impact of nursing home characteristics (eg, ownership) and public policies (eg,
reimbursement) on structural factors, processes, and outcomes; and (5) cost-effectiveness
studies of nursing care at the organizational or system level.
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Biography
Charlene Harrington is a Professor of Sociology and Nursing, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, CA.
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© 2005 Mosby, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
