Editorial: Assuring the Capture of Standardized Nursing Data... Ponte, Somerville & Adams (2016)

In their editorial Ponte, Somerville and Adams (2016) focus on the US nursing care situation and contrast with the UK experience from the outset:

As the U.S. health system moves toward value-based care, chief nursing officers (CNOs) are pressured as never before to demonstrate nursing’s contributions to improving the cost, quality, and efficiency of care, key elements of the value equation. The shift from fee-for-service to value-based care and reimbursement has been made possible through the implementation of electronic health records (EHRs), and the emergence of Big Data analytics, in which payers and healthcare organizations mine the streams of data produced by clinical and administrative systems to understand and evaluate care inputs, processes, and outcomes (Westra, Clancy, et al., 2015).

The contrast is implicit and is not the purpose of the editorial: Assuring the Capture of Standardized Nursing Data: A Call to Action for Chief Nursing Officers. From a still summery Lancashire the above really does seem a continent away, if not a world. It should not be this way. Questions of value for money, the quality of nursing care and outcomes are also central here and digital aspirations are ongoing: NHS Digital.

Perhaps Hodges' model lacks appeal not just because of its historical (mid-1980s) qualities, but a 4x4 checkbox appearance that seeks to standardize care concepts and the nurse's approach? Not only that but maybe the model dictates where they should be placed? The push for data to 'let the light in' and make nursing visible, can also seem a major, externally driven and intrusive distraction from nursing care. That is, doing the job, being a nurse, nursing delivery, caring ...

That Assuring in the title is important. It is the kernel of recursion, the crucial check that is governance and engaged management. Not remote via a screen - dashboard, but in-process - in-situ assuring that the nursing role can and is delivering. In the dash to data vision can become blurred. Socio-technical perspectives are skewed, what might be termed holistic bandwidth is constrained as per the system.

Ensuring that standardized, encoded nursing data are captured in EHRs is critical if nursing is to realize the potential of big data analytics. Having nursing data available for analysis will allow us to gain a better understanding of nursing practice, demonstrate nursing’s contributions to patient care and outcomes, and facilitate evidence-based practice and nursing research. Indeed, we will no longer be driving blind. Rather, we will be driving smart.

Somewhere in this big data lies person centered, holistic and integrated care. This needs to be transformed to self-care. Can these incremental positive changes be captured (once debated and defined)? Will nurses be empowered with access to this data: the big, little and what lies between? Where are the analysts? Who makes the decisions based on this data? Is transparency assured?

As technology advances we have much to do in the UK, lest we nurses find ourselves sat in what has suddenly become a self-driving vehicle that is bound who knows where....


Ponte, P. R., Somerville, J. G., & Adams, J. M. (2016). Assuring the Capture of Standardized Nursing Data: A Call to Action for Chief Nursing Officers. International Journal of Nursing Knowledge, 27(3), 127.