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Research Highlights
VA Conducts National Nursing Pilot Project
Taken from the Veterans Health Administration Highlights dated July 21, 2003
To expand VA’s understanding of the relationship between nurse staffing and patient outcomes, VA’s National Nursing Executive Council has launched a 16-month national pilot to create the VA Nursing Outcomes Database (VANOD). Specifically, the project has three objectives: 1) establish feasible, consistent, and reliable data collection methods for obtaining nursing-sensitive quality indicators and staffing at the patient care unit level; 2) build the pilot VA nursing database; and 3) develop prototype reporting processes and formats that will help sites benchmark and compare patient quality outcome indicators at the local, network and national levels.
The database will allow for testing of practices, provide an evidence base for assessment and interventions, and determine relationships between the structure and processes of nursing care. It will be designed to generate reports at unit and hospital levels that will enable benchmarking within and among VA facilities. It will also be available for research studies related to structure, process and outcomes across VA.
Although the current pilot project begins with acute care settings in 12 randomly selected sites, the long-range plan will include all VA health care facilities including those specializing in psychiatry, long-term care and ambulatory care.
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