Rural Hospital Nursing Skill Mix and Work Environment Associated with Frequency of Adverse Events.

Introduction: Though rural hospitals serve about one fifth of the United States (U.S.), few studies have investigated relationships among nursing resources and rural hospital adverse events.

Isolated, small, and large hospitals have fewer nursing resources than urban hospitals: Implications for rural health policy.

Objective: The purpose was to compare nurse education, patient-to-nurse staffing, nursing skill mix, and nurse work environments across hospitals depending on extent of rurality.

Design: Cross-sectional, comparative, and descriptive.

Sample: The final sample included 566 urban, 49 large, 18 small, and 9 isolated hospitals from California, Florida, and Pennsylvania.