Using hospital records to improve nurse staffing on inpatient units
Official title: Leveraging Electronic Health Record Data for Inpatient Nurse Workforce Management: A Mixed Methods Study
Funded at Michael E Debakey VA Medical Center · NIH-11322108 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project uses routine electronic health record data to help VA hospitals match nurse staffing to daily patient needs on inpatient units.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Michael E Debakey VA Medical Center NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Houston, United States) |
| Project start | April 1, 2025 |
| Project end | March 31, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| NIH project number | 5I01HX003868-02 |
| Project ID | NIH-11322108 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal participants are patients admitted to VA inpatient units whose routine, de-identified EHR and nursing records can be included in the project's analysis, with no active patient enrollment required.
✕Less likely to help
Outpatients, people treated outside participating VA hospitals, or those not hospitalized would not be directly included or likely to benefit from this project's data-driven staffing improvements.
What this research studies
From your perspective as a patient, researchers will use routine EHR data such as barcode medication records, nursing notes, and vital signs to create day-by-day measures of how much nursing care each unit needs and who has left a unit. They will link those measures with staffing and HR records to uncover hidden staff transfers and better capture patient workload (turnover and acuity). The team will compare these new unit-level, timely measures with current staffing reports to identify gaps and opportunities. The goal is to give nurse leaders actionable information so units are staffed when and where patients need care most.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this could lead to better-staffed inpatient units so patients get safer, more timely, and more attentive nursing care.
How similar studies have gone: Early pilot work by the team showed promise, but using barcode medication scans and nursing notes to estimate daily unit staffing at scale is a relatively new approach.
Where this research is happening
-
Michael E Debakey VA Medical Center
Houston, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Petersen, Laura a — Michael E Debakey VA Medical Center
- Study coordinator: Petersen, Laura a
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.