Research Assessment: Part 1 Research Papers Examples

Problem Statement

Pressure ulcers pose a significant challenge to today’s population. The changes in the work environment coupled with social, physical, political, educational, and economic paradigm shifts have critically altered the modern person’s lifestyle. Industrial development and urbanization are major factors, which have brought novel challenges to human health. Pressure ulcers are a crucial health problem for people of various backgrounds. Indeed, pressure ulcers are closely associated with outcomes such as increased hospital admissions, prolonged stay in the hospital, intractable pain, increased hospital costs, and a compromising quality of health. Indeed, in some cases, pressure ulcers have been known to lead to death.
Therefore, it is paramount and of the essence, that early detection of the malady takes place. Hopefully, the early diagnosis will help propel the timely and needed medical intervention to avert and contain the condition. In principle, the nursing follow-through of pressure ulcer patients with the requisite responses will help secure the patients from the dismal effects of the disease. Thus, they will help maintain the client’s skin and general wellbeing.
Johansen, Moore, Etten and Strapp conducted a study on this topic. Their area of concern was the nurse’s interventions to this condition. Indeed, they did a comparison and contrast of the nurse’s views on the risk assessment and intervention approaches to the state. Notably, this study focused on the medical interventions by Norwegian and Ireland nurses. Incidentally, the Norwegian nurses use clinical judgments to develop the relevant response. On the other hand, the Ireland nurses heavily rely on the formally structured risk assessment tools and clinical judgment (Johansen et al., 2014).

Purpose and Research Questions

This study aimed to assess how the nurses conduct their risk assessments and how they define the relevant intervention (the experiences and interventions) for the pressure ulcer patients. Ideally, it also sought to examine the similarities and differences in the effectiveness of using the structured risk assessment and the non-structured strategies.

The study sought to answer the following questions,

What process do the nurses in Ireland and Norway use to determine the state of pressure ulcer patients? What are the similarities and differences in the intervention and prevention of pressure ulcers between Norway and Ireland nursing practitioners?
What effect does a structured intervention have on the evaluation of the patients at risk, the planning, initiation, and the assessment of the prevention interventions towards the pressure ulcers? What is the validation of the process used? How effective are the processes and interventions? Which criteria do they use in selecting the intervention approach? Which pool of medical practitioners conduct these assessments? Who makes the final decision?
The researchers used the focus group discussions to get the responses of the various teams and eventually draw their conclusions. Other relevant questions raised in this survey, particularly in the focus group discussions, were as follows:
What experiences have you had with the pressure ulcers in your medical practice this far? Based on your experience, what factors mostly contribute to the pressure ulcer? What approach did you take in assessing the patient’s risk for the pressure ulcer? What is your understanding of the risk assessment scales? Which prevention measures can someone take to avoid the pressure ulcers? Please share with us any other matter you would like us to know about the pressure ulcers? Which methods of assessment are most useful in providing the necessary information? Incidentally, the researchers encouraged the participants to provide examples based on their unique experiences in the patient care.

Literature Review

Notably, this study consulted the different literature on this topic. Thus, the material used contained literature, which addressed the bulk of the pressure ulcer cases. Incidentally, it also involved those affected by the pressure ulcers in one way or another. Indeed, these included the practitioners such as the geriatrics and the pediatrics. The literature also addressed issues such as the different immobility conditions that put most patients at risk. As well, it contained the information concerning the various characteristics of nursing care in other countries. Indeed, this included the quantitative and the qualitative studies previously conducted in this field. The researchers claim that there is very little literature that gives a comparative analysis of the differences and the similarities. Notably, little literature documents the effectiveness of the structured risk assessments and the clinical judgments (Johansen et al., 2014).
According to the researchers, one major shortfall with this study was that the participating nurses who used the clinical judgment apparently were well versed with the risk assessment means. Presumably, their diagnostic opinions were based on their understanding of the risk assessment tools. Thus, by implication, they were in a way making significant reference to the means. As such, it was quite challenging for the researchers to draw a clear-cut difference as to which group of practitioners exclusively used the clinical judgment approach (Johansen et al., 2014).

Conceptual / Theoretical Framework

Johansen, Moore, Etten and Strapp used the semi-structured designs to collect information on the pressure ulcer care and risk assessment. Additionally, they used the systematic questioning approach to obtain qualitative information from two focus group interviews involving the nurses. Notably, they used distinct approaches based on the unique conditions of the participating practitioners from Ireland and Norway (Johansen et al., 2014).
The researchers analyzed the information by extracting the relevant interview statements from the transcripts. Ideally, they sought the responses that mainly showed their understanding of the pressure ulcer risk assessment and prevention strategies in the procession of care. In addition, they further simplified the data by dividing it into three sections. Indeed, they did this to identify the overarching themes using the comments of interest and the interview extracts. As well, they used the descriptive codes to highlight the differences and similarities between the two groups (Johansen et al., 2014).
One of the major limitations of this study was that it involved only a small group of participants. For example, the Norway’s focus group comprised only nine nurses while the Ireland group included only five nurses. Certainly, this was a limited number of drawing the conclusion (Johansen et al., 2014).

Conclusion

The study concluded that the use of a formal structured risk assessment tool does not affect the efficiency of identifying at-risk patients. Notably, they do not affect aspects such as initiation, evaluation, and planning of the pressure ulcers at risk patients. Incidentally, the study did not identify any significant disparity in the efficiency of the two approaches. Notably, the results reviewed from the groups included the inhabitants of pressure ulcer prevention, identifying the pressure ulcer risk factors, the equipment used for preventing pressure ulcers, care planning, and risk assessment practice.
On further analysis, the researchers proposed that further studies in this area should focus on activity and mobility in the assessment of risk. In addition, they suggested the need for the development of related care plans in evaluating and addressing the condition. Hopefully, these steps will help in alleviating the incidences of pressure ulcer. Indeed, this research is significant in helping the health practitioners identify the patients at risk and in discovering various modes of improving preventative care for the pressure ulcer patients.

Reference

Burns, N., & Grove, S. (2011). Understanding Nursing Research (5th ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Johansen, E., Moore, Z., van Etten, M., & Strapp, H. (2014). Pressure ulcer risk assessment and prevention: What difference does a risk scale make? A comparison between Norway and Ireland. Journal of Wound Care, 23(7), 369-378.