Gerontological Nursing Interventions Research Center (GNIRC)

Title: Risk Factors Associated with Patient Outcomes of Older Adults

Principal Investigator: Peggy Kerr, PhD, RN

Study Site: University of Iowa

Abstract

The objective of the proposed retrospective, descriptive study is to contribute to risk adjustment method development for nursing effectiveness research for adults 65 and older. The specific aims are to determine which outcomes nurses consider important in the older patient population, describe patient characteristics related to improvement or lack of improvement in selected Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) scores, examine interrelationships among variables proposed to influence NOC outcome status, and determine whether the selected patient characteristics vary among age groups in their influence on NOC outcome status. The patient characteristics include age, sex, primary medical diagnosis, co-morbid medical diagnoses, and nursing diagnoses.

The data set contains standardized nursing language, and consists of discharges from a 321-bed hospital in the midwest between January 1 and December 31, 2005. The two outcomes selected most frequently for patients 65 and older will be determined with frequency analysis; contingency table methods and the chi-square statistic will be used to evaluate the association between outcome status and each variable. Patient characteristics found to be significant with univariate analyses will be combined into multiple logistic regression models, and interaction terms introduced to estimate whether age has a moderating effect.

The proposed research is a significant innovation for nursing effectivness research because it will yield key information about risk factors to be accounted for in the analysis of two outcomes important in the care of older adults, and lay the groundwork for development of conceptual models specifying risk facors for these outcomes.