A study published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics found established nurse teams including nurses who know each other and have worked together a long time contribute to hospital productivity and shortened patients' length of stay, according to a MedPage Today report.
Researchers analyzed a dataset that included 907,993 patients admitted to 151 acute care units in 76 Veterans Affairs hospitals. They linked individual patient files to personnel data in the nursing unit treating those patients.
The study found that each one-year increase in the tenure of a registered nurse in a specific unit was associated with a 1.33 percent reduction in the adjusted mean length of stay. Also, when an experienced, regular staff nurse left the unit, the unit's productivity declined, according to the report.
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