Lessons Learned From Decentralization of an Elective Surgery Medical-Surgical Unit.

Objective: The objective of this study was to examine changes in healthcare practitioners' perception of supportiveness of their physical work environment, and trend in patient fall, when moving from a centralized to a decentralized unit configuration.

Background: Previous studies on decentralization have not uniformly provided findings consistent with desired outcome.

Method: A pretest-posttest study was conducted in an elective surgery medical-surgical unit in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.