Marcia Kirwan

Marcia Kirwan, PhD, MSc RGN, is an Assistant Professor at Dublin City University's School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health. Her work focuses on nursing management, patient safety, and healthcare leadership. She co-authored a seminal editorial on missed/rationed nursing care and contributed to the RANCARE EU Cost Action project (2016–2020), which advanced global understanding of care rationing.

• Education: PhD, MSc in Nursing

Her research examines systemic factors affecting nursing care quality, including staffing levels, work environment, and leadership. She has collaborated internationally, particularly with Maria Schubert (ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences), to study implicit rationing using instruments like BERNCA and MISSCARE. Studies associate missed care with adverse patient outcomes (falls, mortality) and nurse dissatisfaction, emphasizing modifiable factors like communication and resource allocation.

Key publications in this text include a 2020 editorial in the Journal of Nursing Management and a 2020 scoping review analyzing nurse managers' roles in missed care literature. These works highlight the need for transparency in care rationing and evidence-based interventions to reduce omissions.

Her contributions underscore the criticality of nurse leadership in healthcare policy and practice, particularly amid the 2020 WHO Year of the Nurse and global pandemic contexts.