Increasing nurse staffing levels in Belgian cardiac surgery centres: a cost-effective patient safety intervention?

In the June 2010 issue of the "Journal of Advanced Nursing" an article is published that demonstrates that increasing nurse staffing levels in Belgian cardiac surgery centers is a cost-effective intervention. In a previous study (Van den Heede et al., 2010) it was indicated that increasing nurse staffing levels on the post-operative cardiac surgery units of all Belgian cardiac centers (n=28) to the level of the 25% best staffed hospitals would result in 45.9 less deaths per year.