Evidence Based Research in Nursing - Essay Example

"Evidence-Based Research in Nursing" is an exceptional example of a paper on care.
Nursing refers to the care given to the patient by the medical personnel in the hospital or at home. It involves observing the patient and providing the medicine required by the patient while they are undergoing treatment (Butts & Rich, 2005). Regardless of the condition a patient suffers, the attention required by them is uniquely different. No particular care can be used as a standard for treating patients with similar diseases or infections. This, therefore, means that nurses who provided the care needed by patients experience very different situations or scenarios when handling different patients.

Nurses are the medical practitioners that offer primary care to the patients. The nurses have more contact with the patient than the doctors. They actually collect data that the doctors use when making their diagnosis reports. In essence, the nurses are the ones who conduct research through their interactions with the patients. With patients who suffer from diabetes, a condition that results from the inability of the body to control the blood sugar level, research done on them can be achieved by nurses who handle more than one patient.

When conducting clinical research, a number of elements need to be observed that will, in the end, validate the outcome of the research. Research is an extensive study with the objective of finding a way to solve a problem or proving a particular theory. Consequently, clinical research must observe a number of elements. The first one is the patient is observed. For the case of this assignment, the patients being studied are the ones suffering from diabetes. This condition is very critical and requires a particular approach to medication which will not be successful unless the medication is taken as prescribed. The research targeted patients with diabetes who were between the ages of 20 and 75 years and had been diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy. This research considered a particular intervention. The intervention involved the use of a drug; pentoxifylline to treat the blindness in place of laser treatment that destroyed cells. The alternative treatment, as mention, is the use of laser therapy. The laser beams have been found to destroy cells around the eye and therefore not effective. This study made a comparison between laser therapy and the use of pentoxifylline drug (Lopes de Jesus et al, 2009). The outcome expected in this study is that the pentoxifylline drug, when applied in the treatment of diabetic retinopathy, is more effective than the use of laser therapy. The time frame, however, was not set for the study. Therefore, the PICOT question would be; does the use of pentoxifylline drug in the treatment of diabetic retinopathy prevent or improve the lesions found in eyes of patients suffering from diabetes. This question will form the basis of the research being handled.

Summary of the research

The treatment of diabetic retinopathy has for a long time been achieved through the use of laser therapy. The use of laser therapy has its consequences in that the laser beams that are applied to the affected eyes end up destroying important cells in the eyes. The destruction of such cells brings setbacks in the treatment process which should have assisted in removing the lesions causing the blindness. The patients who suffer from diabetes mellitus have shown the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in all the ages. Almost all the patients who have type 1 diabetes suffer from the condition while at least sixty per cent of type 2 diabetes patients develop retinopathy. Patients who are young are the most affected while a third of the older patients who are legally blind attribute the blindness to diabetic retinopathy. This condition is detected when the clinical tests of diabetes patience discover the presence of lesions in the retina (Lopes de Jesus et al, 2009).

The evidence used in this study was taken from ninety-seven articles that provided the data for this study. The researched articles were selected based on their abstract statements. The objective of the study was to find out the effect of the pentoxifylline drug in treating the retinopathy condition brought about by diabetes. The evidence was taken from electronic sources and vetted by two authors to determine their usefulness for the study. Only seventeen articles were selected in the end (Lopes de Jesus et al, 2009).

The research study sought to find out the effectiveness of the pentoxifylline drug in the treatment of diabetic retinopathy. The treatment that was used initially was laser therapy which destroyed important cells in the eye. Therefore the authors set out to study electronic research done by other medics. This research targeted the patients suffering from diabetes who were between the ages of 20 – 75 years.  The type of study employed was randomized controlled clinical trials. The trials were aimed at finding out the effect of the pentoxifylline drug on diabetic retinopathy. The data collected from the articles were subjected to sensitivity analysis. The study had both primary and secondary outcomes. In the end, the two authors concluded that the drug has not been studied conclusively to establish whether it has any significant impact. However, in the absence of the information on the drug, the use of laser photocoagulation is the most effective treatment method (Lopes de Jesus et al, 2009).

The evidence used in the articles studied in this research needs an appraisal to be done. The appraisal will be on the quantitative data provided. Such data need to be thoroughly analyzed to determine the value of the information contained and whether they represent the real situation (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2014). The data were subjected to sensitivity analysis and therefore the validity and reliability of the qualitative aspects required critical appraisal.