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Stephanie Valdivia

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           Before my nursing degree, I completed a degree in biology where I was constantly writing papers and researching experiments. Through this research, I got very comfortable using databases such as Google Scholar, ProQuest, and ScienceDirect. When it comes to using these Databases using keywords is usually what helps the most when searching up a topic. Sometimes it is difficult to find specific papers when doing your research but that is when it's best to try and use other databases. My goal as Nurse Practitioner is to one day work in the Emergency Department as it is my specialty now. In my specialty most of the research I partake in searches for medication interaction and compatibility, and now and then suggestions on treatment when asked by either the resident doctor or attending. For medication research, the hospital has a specific database that I use.

            One of the topics I’m interested in is the perception of acute nurse practitioners when it comes to working in a hospital setting. Although different from my specialty, in the hospital that I work in there are very few Nurse Practitioner that are hired. Those that I have come in contact within my opinion are more caring and took their time when speaking with the patient.  Unfortunately, some of the doctors aren’t very fond of them. In this peer review, it looks at a comparison between the care of a physician and that of a nurse practitioner. It concluded that there isn’t a difference between the care they provided. The review stated that nurse practitioners matched or did better than the physician (Carranza et al., 2020).

            This source I found through Google Scholar, but it did take me a while to find something like what I wanted. I did use ProQuest and was unsuccessful in finding anything I can use. I can say that Google Scholar is more user-friendly than most databases. I would recommend it to my colleague due to its simplicity, but I would also not recommend it for everything since some of the sources provided are not fully accessible.

 

Resource

Carranza, A. N., Munoz, P. J., & Nash, A. (2020). Comparing quality of care in medical specialties between nurse practitioners and physicians.  Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners,  33(3), 184–193. https://doi.org/10.1097/jxx.0000000000000394