Qualitative Research Designs
In an article by Johansen, Tavakoli, Bjelland and Lumley (2017), the authors used case study approach. They focused on understanding of the client’s and therapist’s experiences’ nature, how their relationships developed, and how the therapist approached the patient’s experience avoiding certain themes and shifting them in the process. Thus, the authors “chose a qualitative case study, using a constructivist and inductive approach to analyze a client’s and therapist’s experiences of an integrative, simultaneous treatment of BPD, complex trauma, and addiction” (p. 238). The study design was focused on gathering interview material as research data that was later analyzed to derive certain causality.
The researchers pointed out that the patient involved in the study did not argue against taking part in the process, nor did the client insist on the results not being published. Thus, the central ethical issue of this case study was the patient’s ability to share their experience and be involved in the study in the first place. Since this was addressed by explicitly informing the patient about the process, the authors did not violate the patient’s privacy in any way.
As stated by Yilmaz (2013), quantitative “explains phenomena according to numerical data which are analyzed using mathematically based methods, especially statistics” (311). Therefore, given the nature of the study, these methods may not be appropriate to contribute to the research design. However, quantitative methods would certainly help to establish individual causal links between the investigated phenomena. According to Flick (2014), one of the solutions of studying a complex phenomenon is “to take contextual conditions into account in complex quantitative research designs (e.g., multi-level analyses) and to understand complex models empirically and statistically” (15). Thus, this study may be viewed as sophisticated enough also to bring particular statistic factors into account. Quantitative methods, then, would allow the coverage to be expanded beyond just empirical measurements, which would certainly improve the case study in general.
Understanding Workflow Design
There are three main features of improving workflow in patient care. Those concepts are the work system, the processes, and the outcomes (“Toolkit Available for Assessing the Impact of Health Information Technology on Workflow in Provider Offices,” 2011). The work system is a description of a staff member’s ability to carry out their tasks using certain tools that their organization provides. Needless to say, that the optimization of the work system may significantly affect the outcomes of treatment. With the optimization the institution will achieve better results and, therefore, will receive better revenue and feedback from their customers.
An example of improving the workflow in a health care organization may be found in research by Ho et al. (2014). The authors state that “workflow improvement benefits as a result of employing digital pathology include the support of lab automation (e.g. bar coding and tracking of assets, bidirectional interfaces with the scanners) and the potential to increase an individual pathologist’s productivity by at least 13% due to improved organization and tracking of surgical pathology cases” (p. 2). For example, an organization like Florida Nurses Association may greatly benefit from including technology of digital pathology in the hospitals they are collaborating with to achieve much greater results in the workflow. This would be achieved by reducing the necessary time to perform monitoring, data analysis, communication, etc.
Another example of the impact that the technology has on the workflow is provided by Carayon et al. (2015). The authors conclude in their article about electronic health record (HER) technology that “the largest impact of EHR technology was significant increase in time spent on clinical review and documentation by both resident and attending physicians” (p. 12). Thus, monitoring the effect of technology on workflow may be extremely important because of the possible improvements that the advanced technology may create in health care system.
References
Carayon, P., Wetterneck, T. B., Alyousef, B., Brown, R. L., Cartmill, R. S., McGuire, K., Hoonakker, P. L. T., … Wood, K. E. (2015). Impact of electronic health record technology on the work and workflow of physicians in the intensive care unit. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 84(8), 578-594.
Flick, U. (2014). An introduction to qualitative research. Washington, DC: SAGE Publications.
Ho, J., Ahlers, S. M., Stratman, C., Aridor, O., Pantanowitz, L., Fine, J. L., Kuzmishin, J. A., … Parwani, A. V. (2014). Can digital pathology result in cost savings? A financial projection for digital pathology implementation at a large integrated health care organization. Journal of Pathology Informatics, 5(33), 1-14.
Johansen, A. B., Tavakoli, S., Bjelland, I., & Lumley, M. (2017). Constructivist simultaneous treatment of borderline personality disorder, trauma, and addiction comorbidity: A qualitative case study. Qualitative Health Research, 27(2), 236 – 248.
Toolkit Available for Assessing the Impact of Health InformationTechnology on Workflow in Provider Offices. (2011). Web.
Yilmaz, K. (2013). Comparison of quantitative and qualitative research traditions: Epistemological, theoretical, and methodological differences. European Journal of Education, 48(2), 311-325.