Nursing Research

You are a mentor for a first-semester student who asks you why is nursing research important. Please formulate a substantive response for your mentee based on the research element assigned to your group:

Group A: Confidentiality
Group B: Reliability
Group C: Theory
Group D: Evaluation
Your peer responses should be to classmates who were assigned a topic different from yours.

Guidelines
Initial post 200-400 words of thoughtful, evidence-based work. Make sure to cite your sources in proper APA format.

ASSIGNMENT: (3) 100-word responses to your classmates posts each week is also expected. Use one scholarly souce in APA 7 format.

Respond to Post #1:
Nursing theories provide the information that allows for nurses to care for their patients and acts as a guideline for their actions (Gaines, 2020). The use of theory in nursing is essential in order to continue to build on existing knowledge and practice for further developments in patient care and safety. Research would not be possible without a theory that leads to a hypothesis which can be tested. Therefore, nursing theory is a vital component of the scientific method. Using theories in nursing can also allow for hypotheses to be created for further research on healthcare interventions (Florczak, 2020). Nursing theories also allow for research studies to be designed to create explanations for things occurring in the healthcare field. It allows for nursing students, instructors, practicing nurses, and patients to all benefit from the findings of the research studies (Reed, 2020). Through the application of nursing theory-guided practice, the quality of nursing is improved. This is, because nurses have an understanding of why they are doing what they do for their patients due to the research behind the theories (Younas & Quennell, 2019). Without the continuous implementation of nursing theory patient care would remain stagnant and there would be no improvements made off the experiences that are being acquired. This would be a major disservice to patients and nurses, as the nursing field would not be able to expand as it has, and the quality and safety of patient care may not be as optimum as it potentially could be.

Respond to post 2:
Reliability is defined as the extent of accuracy a given result is. Reliability is seen as a quality of trustworthiness combined with confidence of consistency. Having reliability in nursing research has utmost importance when it comes to avoiding misleading information. Nursing research is used to improve current practice and apply the gathered data with the goal of furthering practice of care in a beneficial manor. Without reliability of the research or even researcher then the data concluded is considered flawed. In the hospital standpoint, nurses may replace one method of care with another found through research to be more beneficial. In doing so, they take the standpoint of evaluating the research and concluding it to be effective and beneficial in practice. There are several features in which reliability depends on for nursing research. An article I found from Roberts (2006) states these features include “the initial research question, how data are collected including when and from whom, how they are analyses, and what conclusion are drawn”. All of these features stated are crucial in building reliable research to be used in the field. Although, the article goes on to state how these features alone do not satisfy research as being reliable. If a researcher is to aim for reliable data then they must obscure from misleading information and provide consistent trustworthy data.

Respond to Post 3:
Research using evaluation is seen often in nursing. Evaluation research design differs from typical experiment design in that what is being evaluated is predetermined and altering the situation is often done to adjust the evaluation (Patten, 2017). For example, research is being conducted to determine how nursing students should be educated on clinical nursing leadership (Ha et al., 2018). Students are placed into three groups with three different teaching styles, but if it is determined that one teaching style is not working, the students could be placed into a different group, or the learning style could be changed altogether (Ha et al., 2018). In a typical research experiment, this changing of variables mid-study would not happen (Patten, 2017). The ability to adjust during research allows for the discovery of methods that might work better in a given situation that may not have been discovered otherwise. It also allows for things to be included in a study that were not initially intended (Patten, 2017). For example, a study that looked at patient handoff in the emergency department was evaluating how bedside handoff reduced critical errors, but what they also learned was that bedside handoff improved patient and family satisfaction by making them feel included and part of patient care (Campbell & Dontje, 2019). Had bedside handoff had an unintended negative effect, evaluation research would have allowed for adjustments and changes to be made to implemented changes (Patten, 2017).