Penn Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) announced that the Practice Environment Scale–Five-Item Composite (PES-5), developed by Penn Nursing, has been officially endorsed as a national healthcare quality measure. This endorsement by the Partnership for Quality Measurement (PQM) reflects the PES-5’s scientific rigor, usability, and potential to advance equitable, high-quality healthcare.

The PES-5 is a concise nurse survey tool that evaluates the quality of nurse work environments across five key domains: staffing and resource adequacy, leadership, nurses’ participation in hospital affairs, interprofessional collaboration, and a nursing philosophy of patient care. It provides hospital-level data that is actionable, reliable, and meaningful to healthcare leaders and frontline staff. The work environment supports or undermines professional nursing practice, which influences quality, safety, and both patient health and nurse job outcomes.

National endorsement is a formal recognition that a measure meets the highest standards of validity, reliability, and utility for healthcare performance improvement. It enables broader use in federal programs, hospital quality initiatives, and policy efforts aimed at improving nurse staffing, reducing burnout, and advancing patient safety.

“We are thrilled that the PES-5 has been recognized as a national quality measure,” said lead developer Eileen T. Lake, the Edith Clemmer Steinbright Professor in Gerontology, and associate director of CHOPR. “A strong nurse work environment is critical to patient outcomes, staff well-being, and health equity.”