The Coordinator's Weekly Roster, the Committee's Quarterly Page and a Unit's Monthly Note: Designing Three Reports From One Vigil Database
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
NSG/543: Database Management
Week 5 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The hospital, the program and all data are a composite written for a model paper.
The saved queries from Week 4 answer the program's recurring questions: how many requested hours were covered, when gaps happen, how quickly the first volunteer arrives, whose training is due and which units request vigils. Queries produce answers; reports put those answers in front of the people who act on them, in a form they can use. This paper designs three reports.
Principles
Each report is designed for one audience's decisions. Each uses saved queries so its figures are calculated the same way every time. Each includes only the data its audience needs, following the minimum necessary standard for protected health information (Uses and Disclosures of Protected Health Information: General Rules, 2023). And each shows its figures against a goal or a previous period, since a number without a comparison is hard to act on. A report that everyone receives and no one uses is worse than no report, because it teaches people to ignore the next one.
Report 1: Weekly Volunteer Roster, for the Coordinator
Decision it supports: which shifts to fill this week and which volunteers to call.
Content: a list of all active vigils with room, unit and special considerations; for each, the next 72 hours of shifts, marked filled or unfilled; a list of available volunteers with preferred shifts and training status; and a highlighted list of unfilled overnight shifts.
Layout: a single screen, refreshed in real time, with a printable version; unfilled shifts in bold at the top.
Data sources: Vigil, Shift, Volunteer and Training tables; the training-due query from Week 4.
Privacy: shows patient room and unit but not name or diagnosis; accessible only to the coordinator and chaplains through their logins.
Frequency: continuous, with a Monday morning printed summary.
Report 2: Quarterly Performance Report, for the Steering Committee
Decision it supports: whether the program is meeting its goals and where to focus recruitment and resources.
Content: requested and covered hours with the covered percentage against a goal of 90%; covered percentage by time block, showing the overnight gap; median time to first volunteer, overall and for evening requests; number of vigils and requests by unit; volunteers active, recruited and lost; training compliance; and three brief volunteer reflections selected by the coordinator.
Layout: one page, with a small line chart of covered percentage by quarter, a bar chart of unfilled shifts by time block and a table of the other figures.
Data sources: all five Week 4 queries.
Privacy: no patient identifiers; volunteer reflections edited to remove any patient details.
Frequency: quarterly, sent a week before the committee meets.
Report 3: Monthly Unit Summary, for Nurse Managers
Decision it supports: whether nurses on the unit are requesting vigils appropriately and early enough.
Content: the number of vigils requested by the unit, median time from request to first volunteer and the share of requests made after 2200, which the Week 4 queries showed wait longest.
Layout: a short paragraph and three figures in an email.
Data sources: Vigil, Shift and Unit tables; the unit query from Week 4.
Privacy: counts only, no patient identifiers.
Frequency: monthly.
Why it matters: the Week 4 results showed that late-evening requests wait more than six hours for a volunteer. Managers can encourage nurses to request vigils earlier in the day when a patient's decline is expected.
Building and Testing the Reports
The reports will be built with the database's reporting tool using the saved queries. Before distribution, each will be reviewed by its audience: the coordinator will use the roster for two weeks and suggest changes, a committee member will read a draft quarterly report and two nurse managers will review the unit summary. McGonigle and Mastrian (2022) emphasize that reports and displays should be designed with their users to support decisions rather than simply to present data.
Why Reports Draw on Saved Queries
Every figure in these reports comes from a saved query rather than from a calculation built into the report itself. If a definition changes, such as how canceled shifts are handled, it changes once in the query and every report updates. This follows from the relational principle that data are stored once and combined as needed (Codd, 1970): the same principle applies to the logic that summarizes them.
Avoiding Report Overload
The coordinator asked for many additional lists, and the design deliberately kept the roster short. Each addition was tested against the question of whether it would change what the coordinator does that day. A list of past vigils, for example, was moved to a separate screen because it does not affect scheduling.
Accuracy Checks
Each report's figures will be reconciled with a second calculation before release: for the quarterly report, covered hours will be compared with the sum of signed-in volunteer time from the shift sign-in forms. Discrepancies will be investigated before the report goes out.
Plain Language
Reports use plain words: "hours with no volunteer" rather than "unfilled scheduled shift duration," because committee members include chaplains and volunteers as well as nurses, and a report they cannot read is a report they will not use.
Distribution and Access
The roster is accessed through the database by role. The quarterly report is sent as a document to committee members. The unit summary is emailed to nurse managers. Reports containing any patient information are never sent by email. Access to run reports is limited to the coordinator and the informatics nurse.
What the First Reports Showed
The first quarterly report, using the data from Week 4, showed a covered percentage of 82.7% against the 90% goal and made the overnight gap visible in one chart. At its meeting, the committee decided to recruit volunteers specifically for overnight shifts, partnering with the nursing school, whose students had asked about volunteer opportunities, and with a local faith community. The next quarterly report will show whether the overnight gap narrows.
Keeping Reports Useful Over Time
Reports age. Each will be reviewed with its audience once a year to remove figures no one uses and add ones they need. The committee has already asked that future quarterly reports show recruitment by source, so that the effect of the new overnight recruitment partnerships can be seen. That change requires one new field in the Volunteer table, recruitment source, and one new saved query, which shows how reports and the database evolve together. McGonigle and Mastrian (2022) describe this kind of feedback between users and designers as part of keeping information systems aligned with the work they support.
Conclusion
Three reports, a real-time roster for the coordinator, a one-page quarterly report for the committee and a brief monthly note for managers, turn one database into information each audience can use. Each is built on saved queries, limited to the data its audience needs and tested with its users. Week 6 will explore what data mining might reveal beyond these routine reports.
References
Codd, E. F. (1970). A relational model of data for large shared data banks. Communications of the ACM, 13(6), 377-387. https://doi.org/10.1145/362384.362685
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2022). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Uses and Disclosures of Protected Health Information: General Rules, 45 C.F.R. ยง 164.502 (2023).
How this NSG 543 Week 5 example is structured
The NSG/543 description asks students to develop reports. This paper designs reports around audiences and their decisions, specifies each at a level a builder could follow, applies privacy rules to each and explains how the reports draw on the saved queries from Week 4, so that reporting is consistent and repeatable. Students search this week as NSG 543 Week 5, NSG543 Wk 5 or NSG/543 Wk 5; all three are the same assignment.
NSG/543 Week 5 questions, answered
What does NSG/543 Week 5 usually ask for?
Many sections ask students to design reports from their database for different users, with content and format suited to each user's decisions.
How should a report differ by audience?
Operational users need current, detailed information to act today; leaders need summarized trends and comparisons against goals; others may need only a few key figures.
How is privacy handled in database reports?
By including only the data each audience needs, removing patient identifiers from reports that do not require them and controlling who can run or receive each report.
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