Educational Levels of Hospital Nurses and Surgical Patient Mortality - Article Example

Educational Levels of Hospital Nurses and Surgical Patient Mortality A Critical Analysis This is an article on nurses' education and patient care. An important issue has been taken for research activity. Overall, the authors have tried their best to write this article with great care and not to miss important information and violate vital principles. However, there have been some areas which could have been improved. In the following paragraphs various sections of the article have been discussed. Title The title of the article contains the required important information. It is concise and reflects the information contained in the article. A good article provides information on the geographical location of the study as well as the type of target population being explored. Although, the authors do not share any information on the location of the study but they mentioned the target population, the surgical patients. Problem statement The article narrates the problem statement in a clear way; mentions the study variables as well as the population involved. The authors want to assess the impact of the education of nurses in the hospitals over the care and eventually the mortality status of these patients. This is an important area which is feasible to carry out and will result in interesting findings which will be generalized on similar hospitals. Purpose The authors do not mention explicitly anything related to the purpose or objectives of the study. Actually, this section presents what is required to be in a scientific manner. Literature review Since a researcher has to present a new idea, hypothesis or pose a research question based on some violence. This can be constructed once there is no information, or the previous research suggests some new research activity or previous evidence raised new questions. Whatever be the case, literature review becomes significantly important to build the situation! This literature review, actually, favors and opposes some of the issues and new research is proposed, in a way to decide the conflict. Yes, literature review in this article is comprehensive. The sources are very much relevant to the topic and almost all are primary ones. Both types of viewpoints, supporting and opposing, have been added which lead to the development of a rational for the next study, the current one! Theoretical/conceptual framework The authors have not described anything explicitly as theoretical or conceptual framework. But the way rational is developed based on the existing evidence and the arguments in the favor of testing the research question are impressive. The authors have taken up various concepts related to the topic and discuss them clearly; they also link these concepts. They have not provided the formal definition of various terms but have described them well. There is no information which suggests that the framework is strong enough to make judgments. Hypothesis/Research Questions This article does not state any research question or hypothesis right away as a question or hypothesis but build a rationale and make statements which go in the direction of a research question or hypothesis. Actually, an explicit hypothesis is important for making the future research design and analysis. In this article when the authors write the statement of hypothesis they take into account the variables, independent and dependent. In fact, research questions have not been raised or stated in real sense but the issues which need to be explored have been described very well. Strictly speaking, the research questions have not been written in the article so they cannot delineate the study. Quantitative Designs This study was carried out using cross-sectional design which has been mentioned clearly in the methodology section. For this hypothesis, design is fine as far as the determination of association is concerned between the independent and dependent variables are concerned. But this design cannot determine the cause and effect association as there is no temporal relationship between the two variables. Usually, descriptive studies are conducted to look for any association and if the findings suggest then experimental design can be applied to determine the cause and effect relationship. The extraneous factors are controlled first at the design phase including the development of the questionnaire and then at the analysis level. As the information utilized was from the record so the variables used were already developed so at analysis the authors used the logistic regression analysis to control these factors. Sampling The sampling was done at two stages, for hospitals and for nurses. For hospitals, the authors do not inform which type of sampling it is, stratified or simple random or systematic with a random start. For nurses, they mention that it was random sampling but do not share which type of random. Furthermore, no justification of this sample size is given. The authors do not describe the way this number has been fixed for hospitals and nurses. In fact, whenever the sampling is not carried out by using randomization there are chances that bias is introduced. Sample size determination is important for various reasons but here are two main reasons: it provides the precision to the estimates and cost-effective. Without sample size determination someone may sample more than what is required then there is loss of time and money because beyond the required sample size we do not add more information; on the other hand if smaller sample than what is required selected then the estimates will not be prcised and results will not be valid. The findings of the study can be applied to the hospitals which have got the same characteristics including the type of patients and educational level of nurses. Variables This study includes the variables related to the types of hospitals, size and number of beds and the types of patients being served. Information on patient socidemographic and disease is obtained. Information related to the nurse education, their experience and duration of services is captured. As logistic regression analysis was carried out and this requires explicit statement regarding the independent and dependent variables. The extraneous variables like: type and size of hospitals, number of beds and different types of patients, level of morbidity, expertise of the treating physician, quality of care at various levels like, preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative. Instruments Information on the data collection instruments is not provided in a comprehensive way. Actually, the authors do not provide any information on regarding instruments so it is difficult to comment on instrument as far as operationalization of conceptual definitions, there is administration, reliability and validity is concerned. Procedures The authors have mentioned various types of variables and data which were collected but they missed to share the information regarding the procedure which was used to collect this information. The information collected was in the line of the study. Human Rights They have mentioned taking ethical approval for conducting this study. The authors do not share any information related to informed consent. But the confidentiality of the patients was maintained and this way human rights were protected as far as what has been described. Data Analysis The study uses the appropriate statistical tests; these tests link to the study and answer the research question. The presentation is clear. The authors carry out proper analysis, addressing the answers to the research questions. This analysis is this type of study and the data management. Results/Discussion The authors use statistical tests appropriately and then report them properly. The tables provide in the study are constructed clearly which make things clear. The discussion has been presented in a way to bring all the current and previous findings together to compare them. As it was discussed in the literature review that there have been some studies which suggest direct relationship between the educational level of nurses and improvement in the patient condition. Conclusions and implications There is not a formal summary of these findings of the study. But it cannot be said that there re inconsistencies in the report. The conclusions drawn are based on the findings of the study. The implications of the study findings to the nursing research have been stated. The authors have discussed limitations related to the study. They have not discussed things related to the implications for the future research. They have identified the role of nurses' education in improving or maintaining quality of care of surgical patients. The findings of this study are comparable to other studies on the topic which related to the role of nurses education and improved patient care. Recommendations have not been discussed explicitly but the authors have stated wherever possible what needs to be done based on the findings. Read More