Critically analyze current practice to formulate researchable problems.

Critically analyze current practice to formulate researchable problems.

With the help of our reading assignments and additional lecture material, I learned about critical analysis and how to formulate problems that were researchable. It was not until I began researching the problem I chose for my proposal that I learned how popular an area of research it is and in the process came across so many other great choices for the assignment.

Evaluate research as the basis for decision-making to improve outcomes through translation into evidence-based practice.

Again I believe the text was critical for understanding how to evaluate because it would breakdown every aspect of the evaluation process and translated it in small doses that made it manageable. The proof was in the results of the research and in many instances the studies did not necessarily yield what the researcher anticipated, but it was the process that unearthed knew directions, proposals, and in some cases new ways to practice.

Synthesize an understanding of the research process through the development of a proposal to address a nursing problem or focus area identified in nursing practice.

I believe that this was achieved piece by piece with every weekly assignment. Each weekly assignment had built onto the next, which helped the “synthesis.” This was especially evident within the first few weeks of building the proposal. The building of the foundation for the assignment was front-loaded with information to ensure comprehension of the process. Whenever I had lost focus of the Rubric in the assignment, Dr. Cornelius would aide in narrowing it and point you in a better direction.

Investigate ethical issues related to the conduct of scientific research, including informed consent, data management, data analysis, and protection of human subjects.

The above was achieved through our readings, lecture, and PHRP (Protecting Human Research Participants Online Training). Ethical issues are constantly revisited with every Evidence-Based Research read throughout the course. We translated it with a portion of our proposal in a few different sections. The Data analysis and management was achieved through organization specific to pre-existent demographics in our week eight assignment(Grove,2016).

Explore national and international initiatives and research priorities.

Other than reading about the international initiatives in some of the research articles, I did not explore this as much. I did, however, focus on research priorities which revolved around improvement in the access and quality of care.  I am sure with the trend of globalization of healthcare, international initiatives will be better understood especially when credible schools such as Johns Hopkins are heavily involved in Global Initiatives.

Discussion #2

Research is something that has never been my strong suit and something that I have not been very interested in. However, I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge by taking this course and growing to like research and learning how it makes such a difference in health care. A solid basis of understanding in nursing research is fundamental in improving patient care outcomes, utilizing the best evidenced based practice, and advancing the field.  

Upon the completion of this course abilities gained included: formulate research questions utilizing the PICOT (population, intervention, comparison intervention, outcome, and time) framework, contrive background and significance of proposed research, develop problem statements, obtain research purposes, form research and null hypotheses, choose an appropriate methodology, select a fitting research design, and identify independent, dependent, operational, and extraneous variables.  Creating literature reviews delivers current information regarding research findings and other contributions to the chosen topic, while theoretical framework is applied to guide and support the research.  Appropriate ways to select the sample and size making research more generalizable and valid was also discovered.   Additionally, developing the skill of not only performing individual research, but also recognizing when outside research was valid and significant in order to advocate for changes to be made.  

At the root of all research ethical behavior should be conducted by all involved parties in order to protect human subjects, ensure privacy, provide informed consent, explain risk to benefit ratio, maintain respect, fairly select an appropriate sample, justify clinical value and scientific validity.  Once these guidelines have been met it is necessary to have the proposal reviewed by an institutional review board to continue to monitor that these remain in place and that the study is conducted without bias.  Data derived during the research must be handled properly in order to protect subjects and validity, instruments must be chosen to correctly measure data, and data should be analyzed in a way that provides meaning to the research performed.  While there are multiple national and international initiatives and research priorities available, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality monitors progress of the U.S. Healthcare system by producing clinical practice guidelines, quality indicators, tools to improve patient safety, research tools, and data resources to advance healthcare performance (USDHHS, 2018)