Characteristics and role of caring nurses in healthcare

¶ … Palese et al. (2011). According to Wood & Haber (2014) " the critique is process of critical appraisal that objectively and critically evaluates a research report's content for scientific merit and application to practice." Using the text's understanding of this examination this essay will explore the article and examine it for practical use and valid argument.

The problem that this research is premised upon is the idea that nurse's caring has gone mostly under examined in relation to patient's view of quality of care. The role of caring within the nursing profession is described as the factor which inspired this research. The variables within this examination are the patients' satisfaction measured against the practice of caring executed by nurses in their professional duties.

This problem is clearly identified and can be empirically tested as the article revealed in its conclusions. To help lessen the distortion of the ideas and values of nurse caring, the investigation into these ideas spread across many countries. This population was chosen to help identify any cultural biases towards caring and how geographical proximity may affect both patient satisfaction and its relationship to caring qualities.

Review of Literature

This research article provided a section that reviewed the literature pertinent to this investigation into patient satisfaction. The review was brief in comparison to the rest of the article and not much information was revealed its contents. Nursing as a variable associated with patient outcomes was introduced in this article by citing administrative data from 10 years ago. One of the premises of the research suggests that there is a dearth of literature pertinent to these variables and the cited information is related to a call for " a necessity to develop more theory to support the relationship between nursing and nursing outcomes, " (p.343).

Throughout the article there are a plethora of cited sources that contribute to the arguments being made in the research. 44 articles were cited within this research that contributed to its publishing. The literature was not synthesized individually, but interwoven amongst the article's flow and style of writing . The sources are all current and no conceptional or operational definitions are left unaddressed.

Theoretical Framework

The theories in this article are not clearly defined, because the research itself calls for new models to address the issues of patient satisfaction and nursing that have not been created or investigated. The ideas of caring are vague and this research attempted more to quantify some of these abstract qualities in concert with their investigative study. The authors wrote " caring consequences are not easily identifiable, though patient satisfaction is considered one of the outcomes theoretically linked with caring behaviors enacted by nurses." In investigating this correlation the authors wished to develop new theory and find new ideas on which to pursue further.

Research Questions

The research questions in this article were easily identifiable and repeated several times throughout the discussion as a reminder to the purpose of the experiment. The research in this article wished to address the following research questions:

What is the correlation between caring as perceived by patients and patient satisfaction ?

Are there differences across various countries on the correlation on caring as perceived by patients and patient satisfaction?

Do caring behaviors affect patient satisfaction?

The aforementioned research questions are logically and constantly supported by the literature review and are the main focus of the research paper.

Design

In order to determine the relationship between the abstract idea of patient satisfaction and nursing care a design was created to help quantify these ideas into numerical representation. The research described the design as "multicenter." To measure the variables, surgical patients from six European countries were involved including Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Hungary, and Italy. According to the article " the participation of the specific countries was based on a preexisting established cooperation among them; therefore, for convenience purposes these countries participated in the study." The creation of the stud in this fashion, does leave questions to the validity of the results since the selection of the countries was based on "convenience" and not a stronger ideal.

Sample

88 wards from 34 general hospitals were included in this sample size. Through statistical analysis, the researchers decided to set the sample size at 223 patients. For the experiment however, 1971 questionnaires were distributed to surgical patients admitted in the hospital. 1659 of the samples were returned and of these 1565 were eligible for further processing. The sampling procedures in this experiment are appropriate for the aims of the research. The sample is large enough and varied enough to create an ideal situation for data analysis. By all discernable means, it appears that no one's rights were violated in this study.

Data Collection

The data for this experiment was collected in the Fall of 2009 where each admitted patient for planned or urgent surgery who was able to communicate consent to a letter 48 hours after the surgical event. The letter was given out explaining the aims of the study and assured them of privacy. The forms were returned in a sealed envelope, or given to hospital wards to transport them back to the researchers. The questionnaire instrument is very applicable means of data collection for this type of inquiry and maybe the most cost effective as well. There was no mention of validity tests in any explicit form and were not established prior to the study due to the investigative nature of this research.

Data Analysis

The level of measurement for this data examination appeared sound in its application and practice. The analysis took place in Cyprus using SPSS and incorporated inferential and descriptive statistical analysis. The descriptive statistics included frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation. The inferential statistics were determined to be results of the examined relationships between the variables of interest using correlation and regression analysis. The level of significance reported was p < .05, however the reliabity figures were not discussed. The article's description of the analysis procedures are adequately and appropriately related to the research questions and the overall hypothesis of caring and patient satisfaction.

Analysis of Findings/Discussions