Staffing Models: Making Increased Acuity Safe in the Pediatric ICU.

Traditional staffing models rely on the productivity metric of hours per patient day, lacking the ability to adequately capture the nursing workload. Acuity-based staffing considers the patient population's acuity for appropriate nursing workload. Using process improvement methodology, a pediatric ICU transitioned to an acuity-based staffing model resulting in an 11.3% ( P < 0.05) reduction in the acuity per nursing assignment and a decrease in reportable safety events by 61.3% ( P < 0.05).