P31 | Missed nursing care and its association with the work environment of health care providers in medical area: a cross sectional study across four hospital of Leghorn province

A. Caiazzo¹, B. Brondi² | ¹Dipartimento Professioni Infermieristiche e Ostetriche ASL Toscana Nordovest, ²Area Medica, Ospedale di Livorno, Italy

Premises and Purpose of the study: Missed Nursing Care (MNC), defined as “any nursing activity necessary for the patient that is not performed or is severely delayed in the process of providing care”, is associated with poorer outcomes for both nurses and patients. This study aimed to describe the prevalence MNC and explore its associations with work environment.
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional design was used in which a structured questionnaire was administered to 245 nurses and nurse’s aides working in medical setting across 4 hospital of Leghorn province. Data were collected using MISSCARE Survey to measure prevalence and reasons of MNC and PES-NWI for work environment.
Results: 103 health care providers responded to the questionnaire (response rate 41.2%). The total prevalence of MNC was 40.2%. The activities most frequently omitted was patient ambulation (82,5%) and the most frequently reason for MNC was the inadequate number of staff (89,3%). 45.6% of participants rated work environment as favourable, 33.0% as mixed and 21,4% as unfavourable. The means of overall MNC were statistically negatively correlated (p <0.01) with all PES-NWI subscales.
Conclusions: In this study, the rate of missed nursing care was similar to the results of previous national studies conducted in the medical area. Poor work environment affect the provision of quality nursing care, resulting in care omitted or not completed. The results can inform the development of effective strategies that may assist management with decreasing the frequency of missed nursing care within hospitals.