COVID-19 pandemic became the most unexpected health challenge the world faced within the last century, forcing the countries to change their policies and people to get through massive updates in their daily lives. The demand in maintaining distance, performing various preventative measures, and carefully track how they felt significantly adjusted people’s perception of healthcare and made them more critical about it (Ryan et al., 2020). For the clinical practice, COVID-19 leads to the continuous emergency, required mobilization, and restructuration for systems and medical professionals.
The selected topic is “COVID-19 disease management for pregnant women with type I diabetes.” Qualitative research methods are created to retrieve and analyze rich descriptive data such as experiences and reactions, thus they can be applied for studying how the identified group dealt with the infection. Type I diabetes is the condition that puts an individual’s health at high risk in the case of COVID-19, and specialized clinical practices must be exercised for such patients (Trevisani et al., 2020). Pregnancy complicates the conditions as, for example, hospitalization or some emergency procedures cannot be applied (Ryan et al., 2020). The selected topic leads to the research question “How pregnant women with type I diabetes and COVID-19 received treatment?”
The research question can be studied via the three most common qualitative research methods, such as phenomenology, ethnography, or grounded theory. Indeed, the first one addresses the approach of gathering information from living experience, and the second is dedicated to identifying how participants’ backgrounds or setting influence the results, and the third retrieves specific conclusions (Gray et al., 2021). Ethnography is the least appropriate methodology for exploring how pregnant women with type I diabetes and COVID-19 received treatment because the study does not include any cultural environment or social phenomena. In contrast, phenomenology is suitable because the information will be gathered via interviews, observations, and experiences, and the results occur from the noticed patterns (Smith & Firth, 2011). Grounded theory is also a profound approach to explore how women received treatment because theoretical models can be generated based on the conclusions (Gray et al., 2021). Consequently, the last methodology is the best for the selected research topic as it addresses both the outcomes and study design.
Multiple challenges might be faced while studying how pregnant women with type I diabetes and COVID-19 received treatment because the topic requires narrow sampling, credibility, and proper design for questionaries. Ethical issues might be related to the scope of data gathered, therefore anonymity must be promised, and informed consent with all conditions must be signed by each participant (Ryan et al., 2020). Qualitative research methodologies might luck justification as personal experiences are subjective, thus credibility challenge needs to be addressed by providing a detailed explanation of study design, sampling, and analysis.
The grounded theory was selected for the given topic, and there are benefits and drawbacks of utilizing it to study the experiences of pregnant women with type I diabetes and COVID-19. The strength of that methodology is that a general idea of the treatment was sufficient or not can be stated, and the interviews built around it. Moreover, different types of coding can be utilized to analyze the results and make conclusions (Smith & Firth, 2011). The weakness of the grounded theory is that the scope of retrieved information might be too broad and difficult to manage.
Another qualitative method appropriate to explore how pregnant women with type I diabetes and COVID-19 received treatment is phenomenological. The approach is based on an individual’s life experiences and can help the study retrieve the unique events that participants got through and then build conclusions and categories based on that data (Gray et al., 2021). The benefit of phenomenological methodology is that no specific theory narrows the information gathering, thus some unexpected disclosures might be noted during the study (Smith & Firth, 2011). Qualitative research might receive better outcomes if multiple techniques are selected and exercised simultaneously.
References
Gray, J.R., Grove, S.K., & Sutherland, S. (2021). Burns and Grove’s the practice of nursing research: Appraisal, synthesis, and generation of evidence (9th ed.). Saunders Elsevier.
Ryan, G. A., Purandare, N. C., McAuliffe, F. M., Hod, M., & Purandare, C. N. (2020). Clinical update on COVID‐19 in pregnancy: A review article.Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research, 46(8), 1235-1245.
Smith, J. & Firth, J. (2011). Qualitative data analysis: The framework approach. Nurse Researcher, 18(2), 52-62. Web.
Trevisani, V., Bruzzi, P., Madeo, S. F., Cattini, U., Lucaccioni, L., Predieri, B., & Iughetti, L. (2020). COVID-19 and type 1 diabetes: concerns and challenges. Acta Bio Medica: Atenei Parmensis, 91(3), e2020033.