Research Centers - University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

enough nursing staff on the job to provide
high-quality care, compared to 65 percent in
Canada, 71 percent in England, 62 percent
in Scotland, 63 percent in Germany, and
56 percent in New Zealand. “Poor nurse
retention and preventable patient deaths
are common in hospitals all over the world,”
said Dr. Aiken.
“We must show stakeholders
— hospitals and health systems whose
capacity to continue to grow will be limited
by nurse shortage, large employers who
purchase healthcare for their employees,
the health insurance industry, local business
interests and local and state governments
that benefit from job creation and revenue
generated from healthcare, and patients and
their advocates — that staying where we
are is not an option, and that doing nothing
will result in a worse alternative. We must
use research, policy analysis, evaluations of
best practices, and the media to convince
stakeholders to collaborate on an action
plan,” said Dr. Aiken.
“The number of international nurses
in the U.S. has tripled since 1994,” said Dr.
Aiken. “The loss of nurses through migration
from sub-Saharan Africa is one of the major
barriers to addressing the HIV-AIDS crisis.”
While one in five adults in South Africa is
HIV positive, first-world countries continue
to recruit South African nurses. “Nurses
are leaving because conditions make it
impossible to be nurses there,” said Dr. Aiken.
“We are currently designing a public-private
partnership to develop magnet hospitals to
retain nurses in developing countries,” while
also developing policy to expand U.S. nurse
supply with domestic applicants and retain
more nurses in clinical care.
The data compiled by Dr. Aiken and
her colleagues have impacted healthcare
policy on many fronts, including state- and
federal level legislation related to safe
staffing levels in hospitals. Their pioneering
paper on nurse education and surgical
patient outcomes in the Journal of the
American Medical Association was used
to support a reaffirmation of the BSN job
requirement for permanent positions in
the federal health services, the adoption
by the American Organization of Nurse
Executives of a resolution in support of the
BSN as a desired qualification of hospital
nurses, pending state legislation on the
bachelor’s degree as a condition of ongoing
licensure. Dr. Aiken’s research on Magnet
hospitals has laid the ground for the Magnet
Recognition program’s ongoing success and
countless other initiatives that focus on
transforming nurses’ work environment.
“Our research has given the field
new methods and measures for studying
nursing outcomes. Our leadership has
created a cadre of nurse outcomes
researchers in U.S. and abroad whose work
challenges the status quo. And our research
has been disseminated to those who can
and are making changes to improve hospital
quality and the adequacy of global nurse
workforce,” said Dr. Aiken.
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