“Among the nine countries with the highest number of Covid-19 cases, the country that has the highest nurse rate also has the lowest death rate from the disease. Germany has 13.2 nurses per 1,000 (echoing a trend for high nurse numbers throughout Northern Europe) far above the other heavily Covid-19 affected countries.
“This may be just another armchair epidemiologist observation of course. But higher numbers of nurses may reflect one of two beneficial factors (or both): first, that nurses, the backbone of hospital (and especially ICU) care, are essential to patient management and, ultimately, survival.
“The second is that the sort of hospital or country that knows the value of nurses also is a hospital or country that understands how to deliver effective health care and has likely made countless other unmeasured adjustments to improve quality.”
Read here (CNN, March 25, 2020)
