Welcome to the 2018 National Healthcare Safety Network, or NHSN quick learn series.
These are brief and informative presentations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
They serve as an educational resource for healthcare facilities working to prevent Healthcare
Associated Infections, or HAI’s.
This Quick Learn is an introduction to NHSN Data Set Generation.
It is targeted toward users who enter their facility’s data into the Patient Safety
Component of NHSN and Group Users who want to know and comprehend the data entry process.
The learning objectives are to provide you with an introduction to NHSN Data Set Generation.
You will learn the reason why you should analyze data, understand why data set generation is
an important first step toward analyzing data, and learn how the dataset generation process
works in NHSN.
Why analyze data in NHSN?
Analysis is important because it helps us understand our data better.
For healthcare facilities, data analysis helps monitor trends, identify areas for improvement,
and prepare for interventions.
In NHSN, you are able to perform internal validation activities.
It’s important to manage your data in NHSN well because it may be used by entities outside
of your facility, such as the CDC, CMS, your state health department, your corporation,
special study groups, etc.
At the end of the day, these are YOUR data – you should know your data better than
anyone else.
Take ownership and discover how your data can tell a story about your facility!
Dataset generation has many useful features, such as organizing data into defined sets
for analysis, copying and freezing data, and allowing for quicker generation of reports.
Dataset generation may take several minutes to complete.
During this process, you may navigate to other sections of the application or even exit NHSN.
Please note that when you analyze data in NHSN, you are using a copy of your data and
not data from the live database.
You have your own analysis datasets, which are based on the user rights that are defined
by the Facility Administrator.
You will still need to generate new datasets even if other users at your facility have
recently done so.
In the second part of this video, we will go over how to generate datasets in NHSN.
To generate datasets, select Analysis and then Generate Data Sets from the NHSN home page menu.
Please note, on the Generate Data sets screen, you may either see Not Generated or a date
and time next to Last Generated.
Once on the Generate Data Sets page, click on the Generate New button to get started.
Click OK to confirm that existing datasets will be overwritten.
To include all data prior to the three most recent calendar years, select the check box
on the screen.
Dataset generation can take a few minutes to complete.
While datasets are generating, you’ll see a green progress bar advancing as the process continues.
You may leave this screen to work in other sections of the application or log out of
NHSN during dataset generation.
Once the dataset generation process is complete, you will receive an alert in NHSN stating
Data Sets successfully generated.
Please click OK to clear the message.
Now that you have learned these steps, you are ready to analyze data in NHSN!
For any additional questions or support, please contact our support team at NHSN @ cdc dot gov.