Study finds Scottish Safe Staffing Act implementation facing challenges
A new study from Penn’s School of Nursing reveals that the Scotland Act, which aims to ensure safe nurse staffing through guiding principles, duties, and a common staffing method, is not being consistently followed, according to nurses on the frontlines.
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A new study from Penn School of Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) and published in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship reveals that implementing Scotland’s Health and Care Act 2019 is facing significant challenges. The Act, which aims to ensure safe nurse staffing through guiding principles, duties, and a common staffing method, is not being consistently followed, according to nurses on the frontlines.
Scotland’s approach to improving nurse staffing differs from that of most countries or states, which have established minimum ratios or nurse staffing committees.
A research team from CHOPR and Edinburgh Napier University surveyed 1,870 nurses across Scotland to assess the baseline of the Act’s implementation in April 2024. The study finds that only a small minority of nurses believe that staffing is adequate to provide safe, high-quality care every shift, or rated the quality of care as excellent. A large majority of nurses indicated that current staffing levels did not meet the Act’s guiding principles.
“These findings indicate that the Act’s overarching goal of ensuring safe staffing is not being met at the point of implementation,” says lead-author Eileen T. Lake, the Edith Clemmer Steinbright Professor in Gerontology, professor of nursing and sociology, and CHOPR associate director. “The complexity of the Act’s provisions may be a significant barrier to its successful implementation.”
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