The following paragraphs will describe how the result of a nursing research proposal adds knowledge to evidence based practice. The paper will also define qualitative and qualitative research design. Once defined, there will be a discussion about which design would be used for a specific research proposal and the reason for that choice.
Research design plans are chosen by the researcher to define how the study will be conducted. There are many categories of research design. The two categories that will be discussed in the paper are quantitative and qualitative designs. Qualitative design is a systematic, subjective approach that is used to describe life experiences and gives them meaning The goal of qualitative research is to gain insight and look at the depth and complexity of a situation. Qualitative research designs have a focus that is broad, complex, and subjective and looks at an individual.
Quantitative design is a formal, objective, systematic process for obtaining information. Quantitative design method is used to explore cause and effect relationships. The goal of this research is to describe and examine cause and effect. Quantitative design have a focus that is narrow, concise and objective (Pope 2006).
The research design that best meets my nursing research proposal that focuses on the effect of perineum care on decreasing catheter associated urinary tract infection is the quantitative design. The framework would be to confirm hypotheses, the objective would be to predict the effect of this care, the tool used would be direct observation and the focus would be on an outcome. This design allows the researcher to look at cause and effect of the measure of perineum care on a broad group. The focus then is on a group or population and not an individual. The clinical significance, if found can be useful in the clinical setting for patients with Foley catheters (Nieswiadomy 2012).
Catheter associated urinary tract infections account for 40 % of infections that occur in hospitals. Perineum care is one aspect of appropriate management of indwelling catheters. Research of this aspect of care would look at the effect of this process and if the evidence has clinical significance. If it does then the process could be useful in the clinical setting for reduction of CAUTI. The evidence from this study could show that additional knowledge was gained and implementation of this process would be necessary to decrease CAUTI (Yokoe 2008).
References
- Nieswiadomy, R. M. (2012). An Overview of Qualitative Research. In Foundations of Nursing Research (6th ed. (pp. 44-53). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson.
- Pope, C., & Mays, N. (Eds.). (2006). Qualitative Research in Healthcare (3rd ed.). Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
- Yokoe, D., Mermel, L., Anderson, D., Arias, K., Burstin, H., Calfee, D., Coffin, S., Dubberke, E., Fraser, V., Gerding, D., Griffin, F., Gross, P., Kaye, K., Klompas, M., Lo, E., Marscall, J., Nicolle, L., Pegues, D., Perl, T., Podgory, K., Saint, S., Salgado, C., Weinstien, R., Wise, R., Classen, D. (2008). A Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare- Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals. Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, 29(29), 12-21.
