Since my key goal is to identify whether early mobilization therapy is more effective than non-early interventions, my PICO can be formulated as follows: In severely ill or injured patient in the ICU, does early mobilization therapy result in ameliorated functional state and decrease ICU stay as compared to non-early mobilization therapy?
In order to compare the effects of two different interventions, I decided to opt for a quantitative approach. This decision is accounted by the fact that I need statistics to answer my research question. I believe that exactly this study approach has the greatest potential to answer my research question as it will allow me to assess the impact of both alternative methods and make conclusions having compared numerical data. Furthermore, I will be able to control the environment of the experiment and use precise measures (Grove, Burns, & Gray, 2014).
As far as data collection method is concerned, I will perform it through the following steps (Creswell, 2013):
- establishing eligibility criteria;
- selecting a random sample of patients from 25 to 65 among those who undergo treatment in the ICU;
- informing the participants about the goals of the research and obtaining their informed consent;
- collecting background information about the participants;
- dividing the patients into the control (receiving non-early mobilization therapy) and intervention groups (undergoing early mobilization); each group will include approximately 50 participants;
- organizing an intervention, during which the control group will receive non-early mobilization therapy whereas the intervention group will be subjected to early mobility;
- performing the same examination as before the intervention in both groups to compare the effectiveness of the two types of therapy.
The major strengths of this sampling procedure are: 1) non-probability sampling implies that only patients meeting the criteria will be able to participate; 2) randomized trial will eliminate prejudice. Yet, there is also a disadvantage: Non-probability samplings practically do not take into account extraneous variables.
The following actions will ensure high quality of data:
- eliminating bias through randomized sampling;
- obtaining consent of the participants (ensuring their willingness to make a contribution);
- reducing the impact of extraneous variables;
- comparing the effects of both types of therapy.
References
Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Grove, S. K., Burns, N., & Gray, J. (2014). Understanding nursing research: Building an-based practice. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier Health Sciences.