Smith GB, et al. - Researchers examined how registered nurse (RN) and nursing assistant (NA) staffing levels associated with the failure to respond promptly to patients’ abnormal physiology. From 32 general wards of an acute hospital in England, they assessed routinely collected patients’ vital signs and administrative data, including nursing staffing, from April 2012 to March 2015, to perform this retrospective, observational study. They identified 189,123 National Early Warning Score (NEWS) values > 6 and 114,504 NEWS values > 7, affecting 28,098 patients. Observations suggest the influence of RN, but not NA, staffing levels on the rates of failure to respond for patients with the most abnormal vital signs (NEWS values > 7). This study thereby provides a likely explanation for the frequently reported correlation between low RN staffing and an amplified risk of patient death during hospital admission.