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Purpose: This study was designed to collect and compare nurse staffing standards and staffing levels in six counties: the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. Design: The study used descriptive information on staffing regulations and policies as well as actual staffing levels for registered nurses, licensed nurses, and nursing assistants across states, provinces, regions, and countries. Methods: Data were collected from Internet searches of staffing regulations and policies along with statistical data on actual staffing from reports and documents. Staffing data were converted to hours per resident day to facilitate comparisons across countries. Findings: We found wide variations in both nurse staffing standards and actual staffing levels within and across countries, although comparisons were difficult to make due to differences in measuring staffing, the vagueness of standards, and limited availability of actual staffing data. Both the standards and levels in most countries (except Norway and Sweden) were lower than the recommended levels by experts. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate the need for further attention to nurse staffing standards and levels in order to assure the quality of nursing home care. Clinical Relevance: A high quality of nursing home care requires adequate levels of nurse staffing, and nurse staffing standards have been shown to improve staffing levels. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 2011; XX:X, XXX-XXX. ©2011 Sigma Theta Tau International. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the author's views on the December 2005 issue of the journal "Arbeit." Focus of the journal on the effects of the demographic development on the economy and the employment scenario in Germany; Discussion on challenges posed by the demographic development to social structure; Goals set by the European Union to increase employment.

THIS PAPER EXAMINES THE TENSION between macro level regulation and the rule breaking and rule following that happens at the workplace level. Using a comparative study of Canada, Norway, and Germany, the paper documents how long-term residential care work is regulated and organized differently depending on country, regional, and organizational contexts. We ask where each jurisdiction's staffing regulations fall on a prescription-interpretation continuum; we define prescription as a regulatory tendency to identify what to do and when and how to do it, and interpretation as a tendency to delineate what to do but not when and how to do it. In examining frontline care workers' strategies for accomplishing everyday social, health, and dining care tasks we explore how a policy-level prescriptive or interpretive regulatory approach affects the potential for promising practices to emerge on the frontlines of care work. Overall, we note the following associations: prescriptive regulatory environments tend to be accompanied by a lower ratio of professional to non-professional staff, a higher concentration of for-profit providers, a lower ratio of staff to residents and a sharper division of labour. Interpretive regulatory environments tend to have higher numbers of professionals relative to non-professionals, more limited for-profit provision, a higher ratio of staff to residents, and a more relational division of labour that enables the work to be more fluid and responsive. The implication of a prescriptive environment, such as is found in Ontario, Canada, is that frontline care workers possess less autonomy to be creative in meeting residents' needs, a tendency towards more task-oriented care and less job autonomy. The paper reveals that what matters is the type of regulation as well as the regulatory tendency towards controlling frontline care workers decision-making and decision-latitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]