Nurse-led studies randomise wards, not patients, measure falls and pressure injuries rather than drug levels, and often survey the staff who deliver the care. Capture runs a unit-level design, patient-level outcomes and staff questionnaires in one study. Build free, no credit card.
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weeks
Care bundle live
What nursing research needs from its data collection
The research setting
Nursing research asks questions about care delivery: does a pressure-injury bundle reduce injuries, does structured bedside handover reduce unplanned intensive care transfers, does a nurse-led clinic improve self-management. The designs reflect that. A published protocol for a pressure-injury care bundle (the INTACT trial) randomised hospitals as clusters, with hospital-acquired pressure injury as the primary outcome and analysis at both cluster and patient level; a BMC Nursing protocol describes a 52-week stepped-wedge trial across 24 wards in eight hospitals in which each ward moves from usual practice to the intervention at a scheduled step. These are real examples of the shapes the data must fit, not claims about any study run in Capture.
That shape separates this page from a page about research coordinators. A coordinator page is about the job of running a site: screening, consent, scheduling and data entry. A nursing research page is about the design of the study itself, often led by a nurse as principal investigator or a clinical academic with a joint NHS and university post. If you are a coordinator looking for task tools, see software for research coordinators. For sponsor-style questions see EDC for academic clinical trials and investigator-initiated trials.
In Capture each ward or unit can be a site with its own participant numbering and site-level filtering, which keeps the cluster visible in every export. A stepped design maps naturally to epochs: the same ward appears first in a control period and then in an intervention period, with the switch date recorded. The wider design considerations, including sample size and the intracluster correlation, are covered in EDC for cluster-randomised trials, and the free cluster sample size calculator helps you plan.
Many nursing projects start as quality improvement and become research when they aim to produce generalisable knowledge. The line decides whether you need research ethics approval, so ask your ethics office early. For audit and improvement projects that do not need formal trial infrastructure, clinical audit and quality-improvement data collection is the better starting page. When the project crosses into research, the same forms can move into a study with consent and an audit trail.
Patient-days at risk
PTDAYSNew hospital-acquired pressure injuries
HAPIFalls with injury
FALLINJRate per 1,000 patient-days
HAPIRATEDerived, read-only
3.3 CalculatedBundle compliance audited
COMPLBelow the 90% fidelity target
Study elements
| Study element | What the data looks like | Where it lives in Capture |
|---|---|---|
| Cluster and period | Ward, hospital, control or intervention period, switch date | Sites and epochs; by-site filtering |
| Patient eligibility | Risk score, length of stay, consent status | Eligibility screening template |
| Patient-safety events | Falls, pressure injuries, medication errors, transfers | Repeating event form with date and ward; audit-ready data for each entry |
| Patient-reported outcomes | Satisfaction, quality of life, pain | EQ-5D or numeric pain rating layouts on the patient's phone |
| Staff measures | Knowledge, confidence, workload questionnaire | Questionnaire completed from a secure link by staff with a coded ID |
| Intervention fidelity | Audit of bundle elements, training attendance | Site form per audit round |
| Cost or time data | Minutes per handover, staffing hours | Numeric fields on the ward summary form |
| Consent | Patient consent or waiver, staff information sheet | eConsent for consenting participants |
Capture does not connect to electronic health records or incident reporting systems. Counts are entered by research staff.
Create wards as sites, a monthly summary form and a staff questionnaire, then enter practice data. Free sandbox, no credit card.
Staff as participants
Many nursing studies ask staff about their experience, confidence or burnout. That raises questions a patient trial does not: can a manager see which nurse answered, is participation truly voluntary when the researcher is a colleague or a line manager, and does an anonymous survey stay anonymous in a small ward. Rules on staff consent and employer notification differ by country and institution, so settle them with your ethics committee. On the software side, Capture uses coded IDs, role-based access and PII segregation, so researchers can analyse responses without seeing names, and a questionnaire opens from a secure link in the phone browser.
Be honest about small cells. A ward of twelve nurses cannot support a sub-analysis by age band and gender without identifying people, whatever the tool does. Decide at the design stage what will be reported and at what minimum group size, and put that in your data management plan. The data management plan template is a starting point.
Patients are different again. A hospital patient may be unwell, anxious or just discharged, so consent and questionnaire burden matter more than in an outpatient study. Where the design uses a waiver of individual consent for a ward-level intervention, record the approval, and keep outcome counts at ward level rather than collecting extra patient data you do not need.
Build sequence
List wards or hospitals as sites, and the control and intervention periods or crossover steps as epochs.
Upload the protocol (PDF, DOCX or DOC) and let the AI study builder propose forms. Nothing is saved until a person reviews it.
A ward summary with patient-days and event counts, and a fidelity audit form with the bundle elements.
Create each as a phone-friendly task with a coded ID and reminders.
Sign in as ward lead and as researcher in the sandbox and confirm who sees names.
Approved forms lock for live use. Real participants start the paid live phase.
Before first ward
Research, audit or quality improvement, and the consent or waiver approach for patients and staff.
Patient-days or admissions recorded for every outcome count.
Pressure injury stage, fall with injury and similar rules written once and used by every ward.
Minimum group size for any staff result.
How bundle compliance is audited and how often.
CSV or Excel with the data dictionary opened in the statistics package, with ward and period columns present.
Yes. Each ward or hospital can be a site with its own numbering and filtering, and a stepped-wedge crossover can be built as epochs. The randomisation schedule itself comes from your statistician.
No. The coordinator page is about running a site day to day. This page is about the design and data of nurse-led studies: ward clusters, patient-safety outcomes and staff as participants.
Yes. A questionnaire opens from a secure link in the phone browser, and researchers can work from coded IDs through PII segregation. Anonymity in a very small ward also depends on how you report results.
No integration is claimed. Research staff enter counts and events, with denominators, on the ward and event forms.
Yes for projects that need forms, an audit trail and exports. For lighter audits, see the clinical audit and quality-improvement page; if the project becomes research, the forms can move into a study with consent.
Yes. The free sandbox has every feature, and you pay only once you go live. Check with your supervisor and ethics office on data hosting; Capture hosts in the EU (Frankfurt) and the USA (N. Virginia).
The sandbox is free with every feature, no credit card and no time limit. You pay only once you go live with real participants. Pricing is not published on the site, so ask for terms for your study.
Keep exploring
EDC for cluster-randomised trials
Ward and hospital-level designs.
Software for research coordinators
The site-role view of the same work.
Clinical audit and QI data collection
Lighter audit projects.
EDC for academic clinical trials
University and hospital-led studies.
Cluster sample size calculator
Plan for the design effect.
Pricing
Free sandbox, pay at go-live.
Free sandbox with every feature. No credit card, and you pay only when you go live.