Nursing staffing and mortality after hip fracture hospitalization

Presented at the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2010 Annual Meeting and reported in Medscape:

In a retrospective cohort study presented here at the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2010 Annual Meeting, the risk for death among elderly patients in the hospital with hip fractures increased 22% when the nursing staff was reduced by 1 full-time nurse each day, Peter Schilling, MD, from the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, told meeting delegates.

This is not terribly surprising to me. These frail patients are labor intensive and require close monitoring.