The study found that increasing the proportion of nurses who were more highly educated by ten percent lowered the thirty-day mortality rate of patients by five percent. Conversely, if the workload on these nurses was then increased by one patient the thirty-day risk of mortality rose by five percent. This is indicative of the fact that education and staffing are linked and are both significant when it comes to keeping mortality rates low. Hospitals that have more nurses with higher degrees are larger and they are more often willing to undertake surgical and other techniques which are more advanced. They were also more commonly teaching hospitals and they had lower mean workloads on average. The length of time a nurse had been involved in that profession, and therefore the length of nursing experience, was not found to be related to the mortality of the patients. The conclusion of this study...
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