The current European nursing workforce crisis is exacerbated by nursing shortages in most countries. Measures will need to be adopted to maintain a healthy and satisfied nurse workforce, to attract new nurses and to guarantee high quality care. The Registered Nurse Forecasting (RN4CAST) project aimed to study how features of work environments and nurse workforce qualifications impact on nurse and patient outcomes by confirming, in a large European setting, the core logic of previous US research. The results confirmed previous findings and highlighted the important role of nurses in providing safe patient care and pave the way for a renewed discussion on the direction of nursing’s future in Europe.