Table 1

Number of hospitals with medical-surgical units and with intensive care units, numbers of nurses on them, and staffing and other hospital characteristics, by hospital location

Medical-surgicalIntensive care
Characteristics of hospital sampleNYILNYCNon-NYCTotalNYILNYCNon-NYCTotal
Counts
 Hospitals13511947207254998037142179
 Nurses2820147887734214298134583743917432182
 Nurses per hospital20.912.418.716.516.913.510.311.912.112.2
Staffing—patients per nurse
 Mean5.95.2***6.55.4***2.32.2NS2.42.2**
 Minimum3.43.34.03.31.51.61.61.5
 Maximum8.89.78.89.74.03.64.03.6
Hospital characteristics (%)
Size (number of beds)
 Small (≤100)18.524.4NS2.125.6***549.08.6NS0.011.1***16
 Medium (101–250)30.436.123.435.38427.037.013.536.157
 Large (>250)51.139.574.539.111664.054.386.552.8108
Teaching status
 Non-teaching32.558.2***19.250.8***10526.655.4***16.245.8***66
 Minor teaching38.128.223.436.07939.425.721.636.656
 Major teaching29.413.657.513.25234.018.962.217.646
High technology status29.654.7***33.343.5NS8440.071.6***43.856.3NS80
  • Source: Nurse survey data.

  • Non-NYC hospitals refer to hospitals in the sample outside of the five NYC boroughs and Westchester and Nassau counties. NS refers to differences which are insignificant at the 0.05 level.

  • ** and *** denote differences in hospital characteristics which are significant with p<0.01 and p<0.001, respectively, using F-statistics (for staffing) and χ2 tests for size, teaching status and technology.

  • IL, Illinois; NS, not significant; NY, New York; NYC, New York City.