Foundations of nursing research discussion

Nursing Research

"How will we increase job satisfaction?" I asked. Apparently, the hospital administration had tried several things, including an "across the board" raise, with no change in the turnover rate. Nurse Jones suggested, "It's better to ask the nurses themselves. Empirical knowledge, again, is the best possible way to 'know' here."

"It sounds to me like we are actually going to conduct some nursing research here!" I said excitedly. Though we did have a couple of research reviews as part of the nursing program, this would be my first experience of an actual nursing research after my training. The prospect seemed really interesting.

Refer to the Nursing research topic opens in new window  to learn more on the nursing research topic.

I told the committee that we could conduct a survey to find out what would make the nurses happy. I told them about the research class that I had taken in my nursing program. While I did not remember all the details of the course, I had kept my notes from the class. I said that I would review my notes from the class and see if I could come up with some ideas for the next meeting.

We decided to adjourn for the day and meet later in the week. Each of us would think about the problem at hand and come back with suggestions.

As we walked back to the unit, I told Nurse Jones how excited I was to be part of a research project.

"You will get many opportunities to research here, Nurse Marge. All the initiatives we start here are based on some form of nursing research. The role of research is immense. We cannot do anything without it!" Nurse Jones said.

Back home, I looked up my research notes. A brief look at my notebook and I knew exactly what to review.

I glanced at my watch. It was 9:00 p.m. I decided to have dinner and then go to sleep as I was quite exhausted. It had been a hectic as well as an exciting day for me.

I could not get much sleep as I was excited about my new role. I rose early the next morning, made myself a cup of coffee, and sat down to read again.

I reviewed all the different types of research and put together a table presenting the various approaches for the Nurse Retention Committee. Back at the hospital, I gave examples to the nurses of each type of approach as it was related to job satisfaction.

We decided that the best way to approach our problem of high turnover rate and job dissatisfaction would be "descriptive survey research." It is an important and useful method of data collection by asking the nurses some questions and recording their responses. We decided to use the descriptive survey study method for our research since we would not be performing any interventions.

We also decided that a quantitative approach would be the most beneficial way to approach the research question because the results could be presented as data (numbers) to the hospital administration.

In "survey method research," participants answer questions administered through interviews or questionnaires. After participants answer the questions, researchers describe the responses given. It is important to emphasize that descriptive research methods can only describe a set of observations or the data collected. These methods cannot draw conclusions from that data about which way the relationship goes—does A cause B or does B cause A?

At the end of our meeting, we felt that we were on the right track to addressing our problem. First, we determined what the issue to be addressed was and then we reviewed the many ways to approach the issue. After determining what type of research would be the best, quantitative or qualitative, we formulated our research question.

As we ended the meeting, we assigned the next task to several members of the committee. I was one of the volunteers for this task. I agreed to help do a review of the literature to see what other research studies were available to us. This step of the research process would be very valuable to us as our review took shape.

In Week 2, you will explore and review research sources and literature, research problems, purposes, objectives, questions, and hypotheses. You will learn about the common sources used to gather information for medical research. In addition, you will learn how to choose a research design appropriate to a research problem.

References

American Nurses Association. (n.d.). Official ANA position statements. Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/positionstatements

Houser, J. (2015). Nursing research: Reading, using, and creating evidence (3rd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett.

Additional Materials