Table 3.

Distributions of Missed Nursing Care in Neonatal Intensive Care Nurses, Overall, and by Acuity-Adjusted Patient Load Subgroups.

	Overall (N = 5,861)	Acuity-adjusted patient loada
		Below median	Above median
Average number of care activities missed, Mean
Total care activities	0.88	0.58	1.36**
Clinical activities	0.21	0.12	0.35**
Planning/communication activities	0.67	0.46	1.02**
Percent of nurses missing care activities, %
One or more activities	35.7	27.1	49.4**
Teach/counsel patients and family	15.0	10.5	22.3**
Comfort/talk with patients	12.5	8.0	19.6**
Help/counsel breast-feeding mothers	10.6	6.7	16.8**
Prepare patients and families for discharge	9.9	7.5	13.8**
Develop or update care plans	9.8	7.0	14.3**
Adequately document nursing care	7.3	4.9	11.0**
Administer oral feedings on time	5.3	3.3	8.6**
Adequate patient surveillance	4.5	2.4	7.9**
Administer medications on time	3.5	2.0	5.9**
Coordinating patient care	2.1	1.0	3.9**
Oral hygiene	1.9	0.9	3.3**
Ambulation or range of motion	1.8	1.3	2.6**
Skin care	1.3	0.7	2.3**
Treatments and procedures	1.0	0.5	1 7**
Central line assessment/care	0.6	0.2	1 2**
Adequate hand hygiene	0.5	0.3	0.8**
Pain management	0.4	0.4	0.4

^aAll comparisons of missed care prevalence between the high and low acuity-adjusted workload subsamples were statistically significant at **p < .01 except pain management, which was statistically significant at *p < .05.