Table 3.

NICU Nursing Characteristics and Other Provider Staffing in All Hospitals and by Hospital Concentration of VLBW Black Infants

		Concentration of VLBW Black Infants
	Total	Low (<11%)	Medium (11–31%)	High (>31%)	p-Value of High versus Low
Number of hospitals	N = 98	N = 26	N = 37	N = 35
Nursing characteristics
Nurse understaffing: Fraction of a nurse per infant needed to meet guidelines, mean	.18 (.11)	.14 (.08)	.18 (.09)	.22 (.15)	.004
% of staff registered nurses with neonatal intensive care qualifications	.84 (.09)	.83 (.10)	.83 (.10)	.85 (.08)	.44
% of staff registered nurses with BSN or higher nursing degree	.55 (.15)	.55 (.16)	.56 (.14)	.55 (.16)	.88
Practice Environment Score	3.05 (.25)	3.16 (.27)	3.07 (.21)	2.95 (.24)	.004
Other provider staffing*
Neonatologists	0.47 (0.22)	0.46 (0.21)	0.50 (0.24)	0.43 (0.23)	.59
Medical fellows and residents	0.42 (0.58)	0.36 (0..55)	0.44 (0.62)	0.45 (0.57)	.53
Non-physicians	0.17 (0.08)	0.19 (0.10)	0.17 (0.07)	0.17 (0.06)	.28

Note: The p-value is from a t-statistic comparing high- to low-black hospitals. Practice Environment Score is the composite score from the Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index. Higher scores indicate better practice environments.

^*Day shift FTEs per 10 beds.

VLBW, very low birth weight.