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Western Journal of Nursing Research
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0193945908319992v1
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Article

Can State Databases Be Used to Develop a National, Standardized Hospital Nurse Staffing Database?

Lynn Unruh1*, C. Allison Russo2, H. Joanna Jiang3, and Carol Stocks3

1 University of Central Florida
2 Thomson Healthcare
3 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lunruh{at}mail.ucf.edu.


  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.

First published on July 30, 2008, doi:10.1177/0193945908319992

Western Journal of Nursing Research 2009;31:66.

A more recent version of this article appeared on February 1, 2009

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