Planning and Evaluating Evidence‐Based Perinatal Nurse Staffing

Nurse staffing decisions are high‐cost decisions. Having too few nurses may cause more mistakes or more episodes of missed care resulting in worse outcomes, increased pain, and additional suffering and health care costs. Having too many nurses increases health care costs. The Organizing Frameworks for Calculating Nurse Staffing and for Evaluating Nurse Staffing Decisions presented in this article build on the American Nurses' Association's principle‐based staffing models and Donabedian's framework for evaluating the quality of health care.