title: Can state databases be used to develop a national, standardized hospital nurse staffing database?
abstract: This study evaluates the feasibility of building a national, standardized hospital nurse staffing database from state data collections in order to improve the availability of valid, reliable nursing staffing measures and to allow linkage to other databases. A state-by-state review of public and private reporting systems reveals that 25 states collect some form of nurse staffing data. Out of those, 12 states make complete, usable data available, and 5 additionally meet data quality and specificity criteria. Our review finds that there is little consistency in the content of the RN measure, which makes it difficult to conduct multistate research on nurse staffing topics. We recommend the long-term development of two types of nurse staffing databases: a state-by-state collection, and a standardized, multistate database with uniform data elements across states. This mixed approach will provide a comprehensive source of nurse staffing data to researchers with diverse analytic needs.
authors.affiliation: University of Central Florida, USA. Lunruh@mail.ucf.edu
authors.forename: Lynn
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Unruh
authors.forename: C Allison
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Russo
authors.forename: H Joanna
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Carol
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Stocks
mesh_terms: D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D035082:Federal Government; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D020380:Needs Assessment; D015401:Nursing Administration Research / Q000379:methods; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D010561:Personnel Staffing and Scheduling / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016730:Program Development; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013219:State Government; D018511:Systems Integration; D014481:United States; D016270:United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; D016526:Workload / Q000706:statistics & numerical data