Discussion

Unit 3: Research Problems and Designs

Would your problem identified in the Unit 2 discussion question lend itself to a qualitative or quantitative design? What level of evidence (research design) would best address the problem? Explain your answer.

My Unit 2 Discussion Post from last week:

My groups assigned project is Venous Thromboembolism (VTE): Preventing Hospital-Associated Venous Thromboembolism. According to Centers of Control Disease and Prevention (2019), VTE affects as many as 900,000 Americans, resulting in about 100,000 premature deaths. Over half of blood clots are related to a recent hospitalization or surgery and most of these do not occur until after discharge. This article also provides quantitative research, which is important on measuring the number of people that VTE affects.

 The article from Centers of Disease Control and Prevention will be beneficial to our assigned topic because it gives us 3 main areas to implement strategies to prevent VTE. The first area of focus is to strengthen the healthcare, which can be done by promoting methods and tools to improve and support monitoring of VTE. The second area of focus is to identify and promote best practices for VTE prevention, which can be done by sharing prevention tools and resources to other healthcare facilities. The third area of focus is to increase education and awareness of VTE, which can be done by sharing evidence-based tools to employees and increase their awareness of risks of VTE.

    According to Beckman, Hooper, Critchley, Ortel (2017), reports suggest that as many as 70% of cases of HA-VTE in patients could be prevented. This article stood out to me because fewer than half of hospitalized patients receive appropriate prevention measures. This article will be beneficial to the assigned topic as it provides statistics to support our topic.

References:

Beckman M, Hooper WC, Critchley S, Ortel T (2017). Venous Thromboembolism: a public health concern. Am J Prev Med. 2010;38(4 Suppl): S495-501.

Center of Disease Control and Prevention (2018). Learn About Healthcare-Associated Venous Thromboembolism. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dvt/ha-vte.html (Links to an external site.) .

Question professor asked me:

Do you anticipate that the research conducted on your project would be qualitative or quantitative in nature?

I put:

Professor,

That is a good question. When I was conducting some research on my topic, I was thinking it would be more quantitative rather than qualitative. They both happen to play a huge factor on VTE, but I would have to say that this project would have more quality. Qualitative research on VTE helps to explain the quantitative research that helps with interventions to help improve patient safety. According to Occupytheory (2014), qualitative data is data obtained in research that is dependent upon human experience and holds more value. We will be able to give more insight on the preventative measures for VTE, which is beneficial to improve the patient’s quality of life. Houser (2018) states that the goal of research is to find the truth. But overall, I do feel like quantitative and qualitative data both play hand in hand together.

References:

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

Occupytheory. (2014). Advantages and Disadvantages of Qualitative Research. Retrieved from occupythoery.org