Nurse Researcher最新文献

Background: The strict restrictions implemented in England during the COVID-19 pandemic meant it was no longer possible to recruit or interview participants in person. However, virtual recruitment and interviews are not without their challenges, particularly when exploring sensitive topics.

Aim: To discuss how to overcome some of the challenges involved in recruiting and interviewing participants who have been critically ill with COVID-19.

Discussion: An exploratory, descriptive study was conducted involving interviews with 20 people who had been critically ill with COVID-19 and had been discharged from two community-based healthcare settings in London, England. Participants were interviewed at home after being discharged from hospital after at least one month. The sensitivity of the research topic meant strategies for recruiting and interviewing needed to be adapted, including involving patient experience facilitators, using virtual interviews, managing the distress of participants and self-care for the researchers.

Conclusion: The adaptations used in this study can be used in research involving people who have been critically ill.

Implications for practice: Researchers can explore innovative ways to recruit participants using hospital or community staff who are not usually involved in research. Virtual interviews require additional skills, such as building rapport with participants, so may require additional training. A distress protocol for participants should always be considered when discussing sensitive topics. Self-care and debrief strategies for interviewers are also critical.

Background: Appropriate costing and allocation of resources is vital to ensure that recruitment to a study is achieved on time and on target. However, there is little guidance concerning the workload associated with qualitative research.

Aim: To review the planned versus actual workloads in a qualitative sub-study following elective cardiac surgery in children.

Discussion: Parents of children approached for a clinical trial were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview to explore their views about making decisions concerning their children's participation in the trial. A workload audit was conducted using anticipated points of contact with participants, and the duration of activities identified in the protocol and Health Research Authority statement of activities; these were compared with timed activities documented by the research team.

Conclusion: The current system did not anticipate or capture the workload associated with conducting a relatively straightforward qualitative sub-study of a clinical trial with a research-engaged patient group.

Implications for practice: Understanding the hidden workload associated with qualitative research is vital in ensuring that project timelines, recruitment targets and funding for research staff are realistic.

Background: Nurses have a significant part to play in research. However, novice nurse researchers face difficulties in transitioning into research roles. These difficulties can affect their sense of identity, their clarity of role and the research process.

Aim: To highlight how reflexive processes enable novice nurse researchers to develop self-awareness, overcome tensions and navigate their dual identities as they transition into researchers.

Discussion: Participating in reflexive activities when conducting research provides the researcher with a biography of the experience. It also encourages the examination of thoughts and feelings that can inform and enhance the quality of the research, as well as the confidence of the researcher. Transitioning from nurse to researcher can be complex and present professional and ethical dilemmas, creating conflict when nurses adopt and adjust to the new role. Reflexivity offers opportunities to identify and examine these dilemmas and tensions, as well as support for nurses as they move into research roles.

Conclusion: Nurses hold onto their professional identities as they transition into research, viewing the researcher identity as complementary to their initial clinical professional identity. This dual-professional identity connects healthcare and research, but also creates challenges for nurses, so should be given more attention.

Implications for practice: More research is needed to examine the path from nurse to researcher and why nurses remain committed to their professional nurse identity. As nurse researchers are becoming commonplace in healthcare, research education programmes need to include strategies to help novice nurse researchers navigate the tensions between their nurse and researcher identities.

Background: Analysis can be problematic in research when data are missing or erroneous. Various methods are available for managing missing and erroneous data, but little is known about which are the best to use when conducting cross-sectional surveys of nurse staffing.

Aim: To explore how missing and erroneous data were managed in a study that involved a cross-sectional survey of nurse staffing.

Discussion: The article describes a study that used a cross-sectional survey to estimate the ratio of registered nurses to patients, using self-reported data by nurses. It details the techniques used in the study to manage missing and erroneous data and presents the results of the survey before and after the treatment of missing data.

Conclusion: Managing missing data effectively and reporting procedures transparently reduces the possibility of bias in a study's results and increases its reproducibility. Nurse researchers need to understand the methods available to handle missing and erroneous data. Surveys must contain unambiguous questions, as every participant should have the same understanding of a question's meaning.

Implication for practice: Researchers should pilot surveys - even when using validated tools - to ensure participants interpret the questions as intended.

Background: The global COVID-19 pandemic has affected data collection for many researchers, in particular research that involves face-to-face interviews.

Aim: To share learning about the challenges encountered when face-to-face interviews could not continue as planned in a study and how to adapt data collection so that it can continue despite severe disruption.

Discussion: This article examines the considerations and actions taken by the authors to ensure the continuity of data collection. The research aimed to use narrative inquiry to understand the experiences of significant others supporting people in intensive care units with severe burn injuries. But the pandemic meant the researchers could not meet face-to-face with participants as originally intended and so they had to consider new ways to approach data collection. The authors explore the process of adapting the interviews to video conferencing and telephone use while preserving the study's person-centred focus to remain coherent with narrative methodology.

Conclusion: Adapting data collection is valuable in ensuring the continuity of research. Careful consideration and planning are required to ensure the research remains robust and ethically sound.

Implications for practice: Adapting data collection methods can allow for greater flexibility when participants cannot attend face-to-face interviews.

Background: The main barrier to engaging nurses in research is the lack of research knowledge and skills.

Aim: To explore the influence of research workshops on the research orientation of nurses in a large referral hospital in Qatar.

Discussion: This article describes a cross-sectional study involving 564 nurses working in 14 health facilities who attended research workshops in Qatar. The authors collected data using the Edmonton Research Orientation Survey (EROS) as well as questions considering support and barriers to research. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise and determine the sample characteristics and distribution of participants. The participants who attended the workshop were found to have a higher orientation towards the EROS sub-scales of evidence-based practice, valuing of research, involvement in research, being at the leading edge of the profession and support for research, compared to those who did not attend the workshop. There was no statistical difference between the groups in the research barrier sub-scale.

Conclusion: Despite significant improvements in their responses to the EROS research orientation sub-scales after attending the workshop, the nurses still reported many barriers to being actively engaged in research.

Implications for practice: Healthcare organisations should assist with integrating evidence-based practice into healthcare. There is a need for research education for clinical nurses to bring evidence into clinical practice to improve the quality of patient outcomes. Increasing the research capacity of nurses will lead to their emancipation in addressing the flaws in clinical practice and motivate them to use evidence in patient care.

Background: Systematic reviews are complex and involve time-consuming, deep research in the academic literature to search, extract data, assess their quality and report the results. Digital tools and software have been developed to simplify different phases of this process but some of these are not free to use. Microsoft Excel is typically accessible to a great many researchers free of charge, so using it involves no further costs.

Aim: To explain how to use Microsoft Excel to create transparent and complete reports for systematic reviews.

Discussion: The author's method includes six steps: downloading the references, preparing worksheets, removing any duplicate references, screening the references by title and abstract, screening the full text of references, and listing the articles for inclusion in the review.

Conclusion: The Excel method is efficient and free and can produce transparent and complete reports of systematic reviews. It is a valid alternative to the systematic reviews produced by advanced tools and software.

Implications for practice: The documents produced by this method are a good source for the direct production of scientific texts.