Identification and analysis of the research questions
The research by Kalisch (2006) was about missed nursing care and it had two research questions. The first one was to identify which of the nursing care was most often missed on surgery in medical care during acute nursing care. The second research question was to identify the reasons provided by the nurses for not being able to complete those particular aspects of nursing care.
This study acknowledged that the provision and the assurance of quality nursing care and the guaranteeing of patient safety was a major challenge that faced the nursing industry today. Research has shown that there is a link between the level of nursing staff and the deaths of patients of fail to save lives. Other issues include of patient dissatisfaction, patient falls, increase in infection rates and other adverse effects.
Research has also identified the specific cases of missed nursing care that have the potential of leading to the association between the negative effects and less staffing. Clarke and Aiken (2003) suggested that the nursing staff were expected to perform surveillance practices in order to help prevent medical errors and provide quality care to the patients.
In the hospitals, there are specific aspects of nursing care that were missed regularly. The things that were missed regularly during care may include hygiene, the discharging plan, feeding of patients in a timely manner, ambulation, turning of the patients, teaching of the patients and many more.
Several reasons were given by the nurses for missing some of the medical care provided to their patients. One of the reasons provided for missing care is because there was too few staff. They complained of the patients to nurses ration and explained that they could not be everywhere at the same time. Another reason was the time needed for the nursing intervention. The amount of time needed to complete a nursing practice influenced the priorities set. Another reason given was the poor use of the staff that was currently working and specifically the NAs. Other reasons included denial, habit making and not performing duties that they thought were not part of their responsibilities.
Evaluation of research study design
The researcher of the work took a quantitative research study approach since she was seeking to investigate the quality of the nursing care provided in hospitals. She looked specifically at the nursing care that was frequently missed by the nurses due to particular reasons and she identified some of the reasons or excuses provided by those nurses for not doing them.
She used a descriptive research study design where she used the case study of two hospitals in order to observe and describe the nursing behavior. She chose this design since she could not manipulate the variables in form of an experiment but instead all she could do is observe and record the details in order to analyze the data later and provide conclusions. She collected data using focus group interviews. It was important to use this design in order not to influence the quality of responses coming from the nurses. By using the focus group interviews, the researcher could get a lot of information and at the same time assess the level of agreement among the nurses concerning the subject of discussion. She could also get the points that were most emphasized in order to determine their seriousness.
References
Clarke, S., & Aiken, L. (2003). Registered nurse staffing and patient and nurse outcomes in hospitals: a commentary. Policy Polit Nurs Practice. 4(1), 104-111.
Kalisch, B. (2006). Missed nursing care: A qualitative study. Journal of Nursing Care Quarterly, 21(4), 306-313.