Quantitative and Mixed-Methods Research Designs, Essay Example

The article, “Uptake of guidelines to avoid and report exposures to blood and body fluids” by Jayne Cutter and Sue Jordan, used a quantitative design to examine the compliance to universal precautions and exposures to blood borne pathogens in British Hospitals (Cutter and Jordan, 2004). This article enlightened me about  the statistics regarding compliance to universal precautions across the various professions in an operating room.

There were two findings that struck me as interesting.  The first item as described by Cutter and Jordan is the fact that physicians had the lowest compliance to universal precautions.  Physicians have a great deal of education and should understand the importance of universal precautions and their application. Their compliance with protocols should be automatic, but it apparently is not.

The second item I found interesting was how all professionals in this setting used the bias of a patient’s “nationality, sexuality, and lifestyle” to decide on the use of universal precautions (Cutter and Jordan, 2004).  This behavior is something I have witnessed  in my own practice of working in the cardiac cath lab.  Many staff members are still resistant to wearing protective eyewear.  If a member is splashed in the eye from an 84 year old woman living in a rural town in Iowa, the staff is apt to not report this as an exposure.  If the patient is a 33 year old drug-using homosexual male, there will be increased use of eyewear, and a definite reporting of any possible exposure.

I was not immediately driven by this article to design a similar study.  However, the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and universal precautions has been a topic of interest lately in my work setting as it relates to patients in isolation.  During a recent accreditation survey, it was asked what a staff member would do if a physician entered a room of a patient in isolation and did not use the PPE provided.  Given that adherence to PPE in caring for patients in isolation is an issue with accreditation, perhaps a study examining the use of this in our facility would be of interest.

The use of a descriptive design to examine this issue is appropriate. Dr Cheryl Beck relates that descriptive studies are a baseline study used to design interventions (Laureate, 2005).  The aim of this study was to identify targets for education of staff and management of the operating rooms in relation to non-compliance with infection control initiatives (Cutter and Jordan, 2004).  The use of this design allowed for the identification of areas to educate and improve the management of the operating room environment in relation to infection control practices.

Longitudinal studies allow for the examination of a phenomenon overtime (Polit and Beck, 2004). Longitudinal studies can be used to study trends, and changes of a phenomenon (Polit and Beck, 2004).  Examining the use and adherence to infection control policies over time would allow for an assessment of trending to occur with the implementation of interventions as identified from the initial assessment. Variables such as new staff and better educated staff could impact the findings over time as well.  A drawback to longitudinal studies is that they can suffer from attrition, which is the loss of participants over time (Polit and Beck, 2004) Thus the study participants can change over the course of the study.

References

Cutter, J., & Jordan, S. (2004). Uptake of guidelines to avoid and report exposure to blood and body fluids. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 46(4), 441–452.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2005). Program 3: Research Design, Practice and Research, [Video recording]. (Available from Laureate Education, Inc., 12975 Coral Tree Place, Los Angeles, CA 90066-7020)

Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2004). Nursing Research Principles and Methods, 7th Edition. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.