Missed Nursing Care in Austria

Nurses play an important role in hospitals assuring timely delivery and high quality of patient care. But are nurses in Austrian hospitals currently able to provide every necessary aspect of patient care?

Missed nursing care is an error of omission, which occurs when a necessary nursing intervention is not initiated or performed in time. "Austria is one of the countries in Europe with the highest hospital bed density. Nevertheless, it has one of the lowest numbers of nurses available. Despite this discrepancy, there is not any significant research on missed nursing care in Austrian hospitals, which would be of the utmost importance taking into account the current pandemic," Ana Cartaxo, PhD candidate at the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences (ViDSS) says.

Her aim is, therefore, to survey missed care in this setting and to identify its most relevant influencing factors using a mixed-methods approach. She investigates differences based on data relating to hospitals and wards and nurses’ sociodemographic and work-related data. "After developing a survey for general units in Austrian hospitals, I collected data on the frequency and on the main reasons for missed nursing care. Currently, I am analysing this data using complex statistical methods," the PhD candidate explains. 

Through her research she will be able to uncover the most important influencing factors on missed nursing care in Austrian general hospital units. "But most importantly we will be able to make recommendations for intervention development and healthcare policy when tackling this problem in this country," the young researcher says.