CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE - Essay Example

Clinical Significance Clinical research usually applies methods of statistical significance to measure the significance of the results of any clinical research. The purpose of the pilot study was to try and show that certain practices applied by nurses can reduce cost and improve health service delivery. The use of confidence interval is an obvious alternative to using hypothesis testing and usually gives a range of suitable values to support the results. The confidence interval acts as an inferential perspective for clinical trials.

Firstly, while conducting clinical trials, the researcher will usually use two groups, a control group and the pilot group. The pilot group will usually undergo the clinical trial, while the control group is barely affected. By using the confidence interval function, the researcher will possibly avoid erroneous conclusions that the pilot and control group have the same result in case non-significant results are reported.Furthermore, the pilot study in this case measured the Critical Reading of Research Journals Plus teachings with nurses in intensive care units.

The purpose for the study was to determine whether the experience of improved education, from published research, would improve nurses’ research self-efficiency. Swenson-Britt and Reineck (2009) show that, the statistical significance from the pilot study by conducting a paired t-test, there is an increase on three out of the four subscales in research self-efficiency. However, the clinical significance from this study reveals that using a course may or may not improve research self-efficacy of nurses under practice (Swenson-Britt & Reineck, 2009, p. 460-461). While including a mentor would most probably improve the result, the clinical significance conclusion seems weaker.

In conclusion, researcher may rely on one of the two contrasting approaches to decision making-the clinical significance or statistical significance. The former seems to hinge on the researcher’s judgmental interpretation and accuracy, while the latter seems to be robust in my opinion. This is because statistical significance over a long time has proved to be uncorrelated to research findings and has exhibited greater accuracy in its approach. ReferencesSwenson-Britt, E., & Reineck, C. (January 01, 2009).

Research education for clinical nurses: a pilot study to determine research self-efficacy in critical care nurses. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 40, 10, 454-61