Data Collection: Time to revisit the WHY, WHAT, and HOW

This is the first in a series of three articles looking at school health data collection from identification of data points to utilizing data to share your story and submitting your data to contribute to the National School Health Data Set: Every Student Counts! Many school nurses cringe at the mention of data collection. However, everything we do as school nurses is data driven. Every documented assessment, observation, and conversation provides the school nurse with data. The barriers often noted to participating in formal data collection efforts are time, workload, access to an electronic health record, and not understanding the WHY, WHAT, and HOW. The key to data collection is identifying the data already being collected and starting where you are. Data collection is not something new that you need to find a way to fit into your already busy schedule. WHAT do you currently collect? WHY are you collecting the data you have? HOW do you collect it? WHAT do you do with the data? These are all very important questions, but let's take a closer look at the WHY, WHAT, and HOW behind data collection.