Qualitative Nursing, Research Paper Example

Guidelines for Analysis of a Qualitative Nursing Research Critique

The study purpose is clear? What are they? The proposal focuses on the acceptance of the adoption of eMAR among critical care nurses. According to Poon et al (2010), bar-code eMAR technology incorporates several technologies into the workflow of the nursing staff to ensure correct medication administration. This will help with the reduction of medication errors and will increase the ability to provide more effective care to patients in the critical care unit.

The study design is consistent with its qualitative approach? List the study design. If not stated, what should it be? According to Burns and Grove (2009), qualitative research is used to detect a target level of behavior and the reasons that drive it. A qualitative study is usually focused on a small group of people to guide the construction of a hypothesis. A qualitative study’s results are considered descriptive rather than predictive. Grounded theory focuses on an area of the study and gathering data from a variety of different methods, such as interviews and observation of critical care nurses attitudes toward the use of eMAR (Polit and Beck, 2004).

The subjects are obtained using a method consistent with the stated qualitative methodology? What are the sample characteristics? The survey was given to 15 nurses in the ICU, which comprised every nurse on every shift. The surveys were kept anonymous. In addition to the surveys, observations were made during each shift so the researcher could get a better understanding of attitudes relating to the nurses’ use of the eMAR.

List the studies strengths and limitations. Strengths of the study would include such things as the setting of the study, which was the critical care unit. This is considered to be a strength because patients need medications throughout various intervals during the day. A limitation of the study would be that the study only focused on one area of the hospital and this, although it was a qualitative study in design, could have been larger as to assess another unit with a different category of patients, such as the pediatric unit.

The setting is appropriate for the study. The setting of this study, the critical care unit, is appropriate because, as stated before, the patients receive a large amount of medication and it is received throughout the day at various intervals.

 Evidence of data saturation is provided. The data would sufficiently be saturated in this study because in addition to the surveys the nurses completed after the course of the two-week period, there were observations every single day during various times throughout the day. If an observation was performed every single day at various times throughout the day every single day for fourteen days, there is going to be an overlap in the the information; thus, data saturation will occur as a result and there will be no more applicable data to be collected regarding this particular study interval.

What data analysis procedures were used? The data analysis procedure, although not necessarily described in great detail in the proposal, was one of content analysis. Merriam (2009) states that content analysis is incorporated into almost every qualitative study because the researcher is investigating certain themes and recurring patterns of meaning or random statements made by participants in the study. So, it is sufficient to say content analysis was involved in this process because it is involved routinely in almost every qualitative process to some extent due to interviews, observations, and other methods of data collection.

What are the Inclusion/Exclusion criteria? The study included all nurses working in the critical care unit of the hospital on both the day and night shifts during the course of the study’s two-week period. Any person not working as a nurse in that unit during that time period was excluded from the study.

What are the study themes/findings? From the entire group, 12 of the 15 nurses believed the eMAR would provide better safety to patients as far as the distribution of medications was concerned after the initial learning process. Three nurses believed the system was extremely difficult to master and two nurses believed the system was quite time consuming. Six nurses believed the ‘red flag’ function was the most important feature to the eMAR because it helped them in double-checking to avoid drug interactions.

 What are the study conclusions? Based on the initial findings from the critical care unit, it was suggested by the administration that the eMAR be incorporated into one unit of the hospital at a time, beginning with the critical care unit and proceeding with every unit and then each general ambulatory floor until finally the emergency room was converted and the process would then be complete.

References

Burns, N., & Grove, S. K. (2009). The practice of nursing research: Appraisal, synthesis, and generation of evidence (6th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders Elsevier.

Merriam, S. (2009). Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2004). Nursing research: Principles and methods (7th ed.). Philadephia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Poon, E., Keohane, C., Yoon, C., Ditmore, M., Bane, A., Levtzion-Korach, O., Moniz, T., Rothschild, J.M., Kachalia, A. B., Hayes, J., Churchill, W. W., Lipsitz, S., Whittemore, A. D., Bates, D. W., &Gandhi, T. K. (2010). Effect of bar-code technology on the safety of medication administration. The New England Journal of Medicine, 362(18), 1698-1707. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.