RUA: Analyzing Published Research

RUA 5 7

RUA 5: Analyzing Published Research

Student Name

NR449: Evidence-Based Practice

Date

RUA 5: Analyzing Public Research

This will be the introduction to your topic. Give an overview of the topic in this section. This should be at least a full paragraph.

Clinical Question

This section will contain the following criteria that was taken directly from your rubric. Each of the 3 points must be adequately addressed in this section to earn full credit for this section.

Required criteria 1. Describe the problem: What is the focus of your group’s work? 2. Significance of problem: What health outcomes result from your problem? Or what statistics document this is a problem? You may find support on websites for government or professional organizations. 3. Purpose of the paper: What will your paper do or describe?

Description of Findings

This section will contain the following criteria that was taken directly from your rubric. Each of the 6 points must be adequately addressed in this section to earn full credit for this section. Student examples of each section are listed below to help you with this part of the assignment.

Required criteria Describe the data in the Matrix Table, including proper intext citations and reference list entries for each article. 1. Compare and contrast variables within each study. 2. What are the study design and procedures used in each study; qualitative, quantitative, or mixed method study, levels of confidence in each study, etc.? 3. Participant demographics and information. 4. Instruments used, including reliability and validity. 5. How do the research findings provide evidence to support your clinical problem, or what further evidence is needed to answer your question? 6. Next steps: Identify two questions that can help guide the group’s work.

Synthesis of Literature

Upon comparing and contrasting these two research articles, it is apparent that they are very different in what they are looking for specifically and how the studies are done, but also similar because they both pertain to methods of prevention of C. difficile (see Appendix A).

Variables

The independent variables that are used in the first study (Barker et al., 2018) are different from the second study with them being specific interventions against C. difficile like healthcare worker hand hygiene, patient hand hygiene, daily cleaning, terminal cleaning, and healthcare worker contact precautions, for example. In the second study (Tamma et al., 2021), the independent variable is the implementation of AHRQ’s Safety Program for Improving Antibiotic Use which involves teaching clinicians about appropriate antibiotic use. The dependent variables of both studies are different, but very similar. In the first study, the dependent variable is actual healthcare-associated C. difficile (Barker et al., 2018), whereas in the second study, the dependent variable is use of antibiotics (Tamma et al., 2021), which leads to either more or fewer C. difficile healthcare-associated infections depending on its use.

Study Design

Comparing the design of the two studies, they both use quantitative measures, statistics of C. difficile incidence rates in the first study (Barker et al., 2018) and statistics of antibiotic use as well as C. difficile incidence rates in the second study (Tamma et al., 2021), but the second study uses some qualitative measures as well when they had the participants rate the quality and content of the instruction they received via the webinars.

Participants

As far as comparing the participants in these two studies goes, they couldn’t be any more different. In the first study, the participants aren’t real people, they are simulated patients in a program model (Barker et al., 2018). In the second study, the participants are either entire acute care hospitals, or acute care units in a hospital, focusing on clinicians (Tamma et al., 2021).

Instruments

The first study, being an agent-based model simulation, is different from the second study in the instruments used, because it used a computer program to run various scenarios of interventions, either singly, or in combination, to see their influence on the spread and incidence of C. difficile healthcare-associated infections (Barker et al., 2018). This method is reliable in the sense that there is little room for human error, and you would get the same consistent results each time you ran the program in that situation, but it is not “real” patient experience. I think that this affects the validity of the study slightly, because if it was using actual patients in an experiment with the interventions proposed, it would give factual numbers and statistics, not assumed ones. The second study used an experimental instrument, measuring the outcome of the variables in statistics. The second study has a great reliability and validity, in my opinion, because the sample size is large and broad enough to encompass many areas of the U.S. and many types of clinicians and hospitals, giving factual outcomes and statistics (Tamma et al., 2021).

Evidence to Support this Clinical Problem

The findings in the second research article provide significant evidence that the AHRQ’s Healthcare-Associated Infection Program is proving successful in the reduction of C. difficile incidence, as long as the AHRQ’s Safety Program for Improving Antibiotic Use teaching, which falls under the umbrella of the AHRQ’s HAI Program (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2012), is implemented through webinars as was done in this research study (Tamma et al., 2018). The findings in the first article do not support or give evidence to the AHRQ’s HAI Program’s success, but they do shed some light on some other notable interventions that might be beneficial to add to the program in the future (Barker et al., 2018). Incorporation of these additional interventions would aid in reducing the transmission and infection of C. difficile even more than stewardship of antibiotics alone (Barker et al., 2018).

Next Steps

Two questions that I now have to guide my group’s work are, is there one type of HAI that the AHRQ’s HAI Program has been less successful at decreasing, and are the incidence rates of any particular HAI down so low since the program’s implementation that they could be excluded from the teachings now in order to focus on other HAIs that need more help?

Conclusion

Required criteria Review major findings in a summary paragraph. 1. Evidence to address your clinical problem. 2. Make a connection back to all the included sections. 3. Wrap up the assignment and give the reader something to think about.

Please see the attached appendix on the last page

References

Booth, K. A. (2016). Preventing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Journal of Continuing Education Topics & Issues, 18(1), 18.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, December 2). Current HAI Progress Report. https://www.cdc.gov/hai/data/portal/progress-report.html.

Houser, J. (2018). Nursing research: Reading, using, and creating evidence (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett.

Munoz-Figueroa, G. P., & Ojo, O. (2018). The effectiveness of alcohol-based gel for hand sanitizing in infection control. British Journal of Nursing, 27(7), 382-388.

The above references are examples of how your references should look. They should be spaced as such with a hanging indent and in alphabetical order. The reference page should start on a separate page from your paper.

Appendix A

Article	References	Purpose Hypothesis Study Question(s)	Variables Independent (I) Dependent (D)	Study Design	Sample Size & Selection	Data Collection Methods	Major Finding(s)
1
2

Evidence Matrix Table: Data Summary