By Mary James, R.N., B.S.N., Magnet Program Coordinator
The American Nurses Association (ANA) established the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) in 1998 to measure various nursing activities that identify and promote nurses' roles in care quality. Nearly 1,400 hospitals participate, with representation from six countries in addition to the United States.
With the leadership of Kathy Richerson, R.N., M.S., Chief Nursing Officer, NorthBay Healthcare joined NDNQI in 2002 because we were interested in quality improvement and wanted data to measure our improvement initiatives. Our data for patient falls, pressure ulcers and restraint prevalence studies are submitted quarterly to NDNQI.
The direct care nurses at NorthBay participate in the annual NDNQI RN Satisfaction Survey. This survey "provides a national data repository through which hospitals can confidentially compare nursing sensitive indicators at the unit level to similar units in hospitals across the country" (http://nursingworld.org/).
The University of Kansas School of Nursing manages the database. According to the NDNQI, nurses are eligible to participate in the R.N. Satisfaction Survey if they work full or part time, spend at least 50 percent of their time in direct patient care, and have been employed a minimum of three months on their unit. In 2008, the NDNQI survey was used in nearly 700 hospitals, making it the largest survey of registered nurses in the United States.
The R.N. Satisfaction Survey affords us the opportunity to benchmark our successes as well as to identify areas for improvement. Our goal is to continue to support an environment that promotes nurses to participate in improvement initiatives. The R.N. Satisfaction Survey is one method of taking the pulse of nurses with direct patient care.
The 2011 survey was completed on Aug. 21. At NorthBay, 86 percent of eligible nurses participated in the survey, significantly higher than the national response rate of 72 percent as of September 2011. In order to meet the requirements for Magnet designation our survey responses must exceed the mean a majority of the time as compared to the NDNQI national database. In late November, directors, managers and department-based councils will be sharing the results of the survey with you.
We look forward to identifying areas for opportunities for improvement and celebrating our success.
