Qualitative Research Analysis
The utilization of qualitative research strategies in nursing research is very common. It is due to the need for Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNSs) to become educated with respect to how such subjective discoveries can fill in as proof for nursing training modifications. Qualitative research is all about enquiring whereby the researcher acts as the collection tool, thus seeking answers as to questions about how or why a particular phenomenon occurs. Mostly, these researches are done to help nurses during their practice. Therefore, the following paragraphs will have a look at two qualitative researches, analyzing them to identify how they impact the during nursing practice.
In this paper, I will look at two qualitative researches, namely; compassion fatigue and incorrect prescribing for elderly patients. The studies have different meanings whereby incorrect prescribing for elderly patients refers to a study that was done to individuals aged 65 years and above to ensure that they receive the right treatment when they get to the hospital. This is regardless of whichever health diseases they have. The importance of this study to nurses was to highlight public health issues arising with the consequences of practice in elderly patients, thus helping them by giving them the right medication. Therefore, the research was to provide a practitioners’ view on appropriate prescriptions for elderly patients with the aim of giving them better treatment (Clyne et al., 2016). The research had a few questions regarding the study like; What is the frequency of inappropriate elderly prescription? What clinical results or consequences are encountered due to wrong prescriptions? How can the delinquent be reduced best? And, what perspectives do the clinicians have on the issue?
Compassion fatigue, on the other side, refers to a described condition in which the nurses have diminished ability to empathize for the patients. This problem makes the nurses to distance themselves from the patients, which affects the relationship between the patient and the nurse in regard to delivery of care (Ray et al., 2013). The importance of this article in the research was to help the nurses understand the cause of their problems and the best ways to cope with them. This brings us to the main objective, which is helping nurses cope with their problems for the good of the patients. The research questions during this study were Would nurse behavior change if fatigue was identified fast? Would the outcome of patients improve? And would the hospitals reputation improve?
These articles support nurse practice issues by ensuring that the nurses get the required skill and ability to ability to treat their patients well without any problems or hindrances. This is by giving the right ways to treat the elderly patients and the best ways to deal with compassion fatigue among nurses. However, the research shows that there are different interventions in both articles. In the article on incorrect prescription for the elderly, we find that there was intervention from health facilities management and even from medical researchers. These interventions were to help come up with ideas on how the issue will be addressed so that the nurses in practice get the best means to deal with it. Comparison groups were also present in the research of this article to compare the means used to treat at the moment. Thus, helping the researchers to find the best ways of addressing this issue and providing a clear comparison to nurses in practice to help them differentiate the ways and do an excellent task.
Intervention and comparison groups were also in the compassion fatigue article to help the nurses in practice (Yoder, 2010). Intervention, in this case, is seen from the hospital management and family members who were worried about the nurses. They, therefore, tried to figure out the result of the problem, and this was recorded by groups that wanted to help the nurses in practice and to learn about the problem so that they may not follow the same footsteps as other nurses. Therefore, these intervention and comparison groups helped a lot in both articles by supporting the nurses’ practice and resolving issues.
During the researches, various methods of study were employed in both articles. These methods showed how or rather the means used by the researchers during their research. Comparison fatigue article study used interviews in its research. This was through interviewing the nurses. A good example is by interviewing the most experienced nurses who work with kids to determine their experience in their everyday work and find out whether it affects their private lives. This is because lots of compassion fatigue cases are from nurses who work a lot by engaging in busy units like emergency and oncology departments.
The other article on correct prescriptions for the elderly, semi-structured interviewing method was used. This method examined the viewpoints of general specialists in a random controlled path configuration intended towards diminishing the commonness of conceivably unseemly solution in old patients, which would prompt the capstone main concern project of old falls and the related comorbidities. The primary focus of the study of this article was on the old population of patients. A practical example was through investigating the sick patients that are older than 70 years. This method was very appropriate as it wanted to search for the general specialists opinions, which can only be done effectively using the qualitative approach. These two methods are different in the fact that one investigates the nurses, and the other investigates the patients to get answers and look for solutions.
These methods in the articles, however, have their benefits and weaknesses during the study. The benefit seen from compassion fatigue is that the researcher can interview the nurses and gets to see how they behave as well as obtain first-hand information without any interference. However, the limitation of this method is that there is wastage of a lot of time during the process of going to the hospital to interview the nurse. The benefit of structured interviewing, however, is that the interviewer also gets to receive information from real patients. Therefore they can come up with better solutions for the old. Its limitation is that the patients at times do not know their problems and therefore can’t give any explanation to the reviewer, or maybe they can’t remember their problems.
The research from both articles brought back different results based on what was being researched. The results from the right treatment for the elderly showed that three themes were identified during the research. They included; complex environmental prescriptions, protective relations between the medics and the patients, and lastly, the importance of possibly unfortunate as a concept. The study also identified that there was poor communication, which brought about complexity during prescription, thus leading to wrong prescriptions from the nurses. An example that can be raised from this finding is in a case where an elderly goes to the hospital with an illness and the nurse fails to engage him/her in a good conversation to determine their illnesses. Through this, the nurse ends up giving the wrong medications, which significantly affects the health of the person.
The findings from complicated fatigues indicated that there were increased depression levels from the clinicians with compassion fatigue. Understaffing, together with a lack of interdisciplinary organization, increased the factors of compassion fatigue between health workers. The findings also showed that majority of health professionals are not compensated for their overtime work in the departments. Therefore, the research highlights that not solving the problem affects the nursing practice future. An example of this type of finding is when an health personnel, like the nurses, engages in a lot of work than usual for an extended period of time. This is by them working tirelessly in the clinics every day. Therefore, the person ends up suffering from compassion fatigue, thus affecting the rate of them doing work.
The conclusions driven from the two studies in nursing practice are that compassion fatigue problems should be avoided by nurses in practice by reducing the time they work and do daily tasks in the hospitals. This is to ensure that the reputation of the healthcare and the patient’s health is not affected. The research also implicates that the nurses should always communicate well and more with elderly patients to ensure that they get their problems properly and give them the right medication. This generally concludes the nurses should always be very careful and skillful in their day to day work in the hospitals.
My PICOT anticipated outcomes are that the results of complicated fatigue are mainly due to the nurses and medical experts being overworking themselves in the hospitals and still go back home to perform other tasks. Therefore, they don’t give themselves enough time to sleep. Even when they get back to work the next day, there are seen working hard in operation rooms. This increased overworking makes them to suffer complicated fatigue. The other anticipation of mine is that the result why nurses give wrong medication to old patients is due to lack of engaging in a conversation with the patient. This is whereby the nurse just checks on the patient and describes a particular medication without wanting to know whether the patient has any other problems like heart disease or others.
From the research outcomes of the two articles, we find out that these outcomes compare very well with my own anticipated outcomes. This is because I had anticipated that lack of communication between the patients and the nurse is the reason for administering wrong medications to patients. The research outcomes end up showing that poor communication is one of the causes of nurses giving wrong medications to old patients. Another outcome that supported my anticipated outcomes was that of compassion fatigue. The research outcome from this article proves that one of the reasons why doctors have compassion fatigue is because the doctors and nurses overwork themselves in work. This is by overworking in all medical rooms; therefore compassion fatigue develops.
Ethical considerations have been addressed in this research study in both articles. We find that in order for the researchers to be allowed to carry out their research on the inappropriate treatment of the elderly, they first had to seek for ethical approval. The approval even allowed them to research from the College in Irish. The same happened with compassion fatigue, whereby they had to agree to agree not to publish the names of those who were interviewed. Therefore, this shows that ethics had to be upheld during the research (Connelly, 2014). An example of this is when a person plans on doing a research on something. To be able to do the research, they need to consider ethical requirements that accompany the research so that they can avoid any future problems.
In conclusion, the research proves that for the hospitals to maintain their honor and reputation, they have to ensure that the nurses do their tasks properly, and they should strive to avoid giving wrong medications to patients and even avoid compassion fatigue or burn out.
References
Ray, S. L., Wong, C., White, D., & Heaslip, K. (2013). Compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, work life conditions, and burnout among frontline mental health care professionals. Traumatology, 19(4), 255-267.
Yoder, E. A. (2010). Compassion fatigue in nurses. Applied Nursing Research, 23(4), 191-197. Rough Draft Qualitative Research Critique and Ethical Considerations Examples.
Clyne, B., Cooper, J. A., Hughes, C. M., Fahey, T., & Smith, S. M. (2016). ‘Potentially inappropriate or specifically appropriate?’ Qualitative evaluation of general practitioners views on prescribing, polypharmacy and potentially inappropriate prescribing in older people. BMC Family Practice, 17(1), 109
Kourkouta, L., & Papathanasiou, I. V. (2014). Communication in nursing practice. Materia socio medica, 26(1), 65.
Connelly, L. M. (2014). Ethical considerations in research studies. Medsurg Nursing, 23(1), 54-56.