Measurement of Nursing's Complex Health Care Work: Evolution of the Science For Determining the Required Staffing For Safe and Effective Patient Care.

The availability of technology to monitor and manage data increases our ability to better understand the processes and outcomes needed for patient care. It is important to remember this work requires not only the science of data management, but also the art of integrating the multiple variables involved in the dynamic of safe staffing. Fasoli and Haddock (2010) provided an excellent summary of the literature. Nurse leaders must be open to new additions to this work and the possibility that the essential ingredient of the gold standard for patient classification systems (PCS) might still be missing. The goal of a new approach to determine time for nurse work was to advance the science of PCS from the perspective of the characteristics identified by Fasoli and Haddock.