hi all,
i am doing my summer project with a hospital - which wants me to identify the WHO staffing norms in terms of

* nurse - patient
* doctor patient

could any of U please help me with any article/xl file which could gimme some statistical info?




thanks and regards.........

Hi Girija,
I Got some information for you


In considering numbers of nurses for any health services, one has to take into account the context that nurses are working. It depends greatly on patient’s needs for nursing (patient acuity), support to nurses in giving patient care and their expected roles and responsibilities.

For example, intensive care unit, where patients are highly dependent, completely depending on nurses to provide care which is intensive in nature, will require greater numbers of nurses than a unit where patients require moderate or minimal care or can help themselves. In addition, if there are some supportive workers to help nurses to carry out non-direct patient care functions, the numbers of nurses requiring for providing care in that unit will normally be less than the unit that nurses have to carry out both direct and non-direct patient care functions by themselves. Furthermore, in a setting where nurses also have to assume expanded functions, such as providing basic medical care, numbers of nurses required will be more than a similar setting where nurses only carry out traditional nursing functions.


However, the 1993 World Bank’s World Development Report advocated that nurses and midwives could deliver most of the minimum essential public health and clinical services, with doctors providing clinical supervision and direct care of complex issues and complications. It suggests, as a rule of thumb, that the ratio of nurses to doctors should exceed 2:1 as a minimum with 4:1 or higher considered more satisfactory for cost-effective and quality care.

The Commission of Macroeconomic and Health (2001) also noted that many of the health care interventions provided at community level can be carried out by people other than doctors: by nurses, midwives and other paramedical staff of various degree of training.