Diane Boyle, PhD, RN, has a main goal to accomplish through her post as the first Wyoming Excellence Chair in Nursing. Boyle came to Wyoming in August 2013 through UW's Excellence in Higher Education Endowment with plans to examine differences in nursing quality between rural and urban hospitals and determine what nursing workforce attributes are associated with good patient outcomes in rural hospitals. In pursuit of the information needed to make such evaluations, her research team has acquired a data set from the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators ® (NDNQI®) assessing US hospitals in three categories: 52 rural, 1500 urban and 184 micropolitan (urban area with population of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000). At least seven Wyoming hospitals’ data are reflected in those records.
Boyle and her team’s analysis of the data will be completed by May 2014, with the resulting report submitted to pertinent nursing journals over the summer. Not only should Boyle’s report identify potential problem areas in our hospitals, but the report should be able to direct leaders to the solutions for better healthcare and better nursing care in Wyoming.
“Dr. Boyle brings to UW significant expertise in health outcomes, patient safety, nursing quality indicators, nursing workforce issues and health care work environments – areas that are very important for the school, college and the state of Wyoming,” says Dean Mary Burman. Boyle acted as deputy director and co-principal investigator of the NDNQI® at the University of Kansas School of Nursing, where she was a faculty member from 1994 to 2013.
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April 2014