Military Nursing Outcomes Database: Analysis & Expansion

Patient safety and provision of quality nursing care are critical health care issues in every Military Treatment Facility (MTF). Military nurse leaders and nurse researchers now have the ability to collect and analyze daily variation in staffing with previously unrealized but essential precision and examine its effect on patient safety and outcomes. With nursing-sensitive outcomes evolving as a permanent component of the healthcare system, it is imperative that the measurement and reporting on nursing sensitive outcomes be conducted using easy and practical methods that provide meaningful and ongoing population-specific information to both consumers and providers (Buerhaus & Needleman, 2000; Whitman et al., 2002).

This proposal represents the fourth study in the program of research dedicated to staffing effectiveness and patient safety within the military healthcare environment. The global aim of this long-term multi-staged military nursing research program has always been to create and implement a high quality database consisting of data related to nurse staffing effectiveness and patient safety indicators. The specific aims of this study are to further expand the Military Nursing Outcomes Database (MilNOD) from seven MTFs to a total of 14 MTFs encompassing six Army, four Navy, and four Air Force military treatment facilities and to shift from database development to data analysis.

Data deemed valid and reliable from the study, "Establishing a Military Nursing Outcome Database" (Brosch, 2002), will undergo secondary analyses to examine relationships between nursing structure indicators, and patient and nurse outcome indicators. The research team will specify a series of regression models, examining each outcome variable separately. For survey subscales on the Nursing Work Index-Revised and the Patient Satisfaction Survey, correlations will be performed to examine associations among independent variables and between independent and dependent variables. Simple Pearson's correlations will indicate whether a relationship exists between nurse and patient satisfaction.

Findings from this study will be used both strategically and operationally to effect policies pertaining to the quality of military health care in general and the quality of military nursing care in particular.

Final report is available on NTRL: https://ntrl.ntis.gov/NTRL/dashboard/searchResults/titleDetail/PB2013101...