Nursing research has been described as the type of research that is used in the nursing practice and it mainly aims at providing with evidence used in enhancing the practices of nursing. The fact that the nursing profession is mainly an evidence-based profession makes many nurses, based in universities and in the healthcare setting work as researchers.
More often, nursing focusses on the utilization of the evidence gathered from different research studies in rationalizing the nursing mediations. Nursing research can be categorized in two primary types of research: quantitative nursing research, and qualitative nursing research.
The quantitative research on the measurable results from clients. To that end, the appropriate researchable population in this type of research are the clients receiving nursing services. The qualitative research is centred on analysing the experiences of the people receiving and delivering nursing services. To this end, the appropriate researchable population is the individuals receiving nursing care, along with nurses.
There is a myriad of challenges associated with choosing the appropriate sample in nursing research. Among them include selection bias. This means that the selected sample does not represent the population accurately. Sampling bias may also result in inadequate sampling, which might over-estimate or under-estimate the characteristics of the sample.
Moreover, some segments of the target population might lack the ability, or even refuse to participate in the study for a sampling plan. Overcoming these challenges requires the researcher to have a sound selection strategy in place. A good selection strategy ensures the validity of the sample population, and additionally, it serves to overcome episodes of biasness.
Most researchable population are patients suffering from CHF which is a chronic condition that affects about 5 million people in US. Patients with Congestive Heart Failure have frequent visits to Emergency Department and hospital re-admissions. There are many challenges in this research. One challenge is educating the patients to avoid re-admission.Patients' education focuses on management of CHF, medication management, and non-pharmacological strategies.
Also, we will need access to medical records where we will need authorization in order to avoid HIPPA violation, where if we do, our research will not be considered viable. Additionally, we will would need access to patients with CHF and get authorization from these patients for interview purpose. We will address their other chronic condition leading to CHF, genetic, family history, lifestyle, drinking, smoking illicit drug habits all of which contribute to CHF, and eating habits. As mentioned above we can overcome these challenges by having proper documentation.
Accessing records of deceased patients with CHF if we get authorization or that we can have the live expectancy of a patient with CHF as the chart will reflect when the patient was diagnosed and when the patient expired. While they suffered from CHF what where the changes they made or did not make that prolonged their lives or shorten their lives.
I have a patient with CHF that continued smoking 1 pack of cigarettes a day, drank 4 beers and had a high fat and carbohydrate diet that patient shorted their life expectancy although he was receiving pharmacological treatment. Many CHF patients change their lifestyle and adhere to pharmacological treatment and doctor visits and their lives are prolonged.