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This is for the "Telemonitoring…" article
The purpose of this research is to determine if it is advantageous to employ electronic home monitoring (EHM) for heart failure patients. Advantageous is determined by whether or not additional costs and hospital visits could be reduced with this technology, and if it could increase the length of time between hospital visits.
The research questions in this study were implicit and stated in the form of three hypotheses. The first questioned whether or not lower costs, emergency room and hospital visits could be achieved with EHM, the second was whether or not quality of life and caregiver mastery could improve while lowering rates of depressive symptoms, and the final one wondered whether or not, the combination of EHM, caregiver mastery and informal social support could decrease the risk of readmission to hospitals.
The authors provided a lengthy description of the design of this study which involved a randomized clinical trial in which there was a control group and an intervention group, the latter of which utilized EHM. The researchers attempted to make all other factors equal between these groups, including facets related to their sample pool.
4) The...
Virtually everything that the researchers studied was quantifiable, from the number of hospital readmissions to emergency room visits, to rates of depressive symptoms to measures of caregiver mastery. The plethora of numbers involved in this research indicated that it was a quantitative study.
5) This was a retrospective study because the authors gathered empirical evidence first and then analyzed it for any particular trends or for the answers to their research questions. They looked back at the data to draw conclusions, making the study retrospective.
6) The evidence that this journal is peered reviewed consists of the fact that this study was "reviewed and approved by the institutional review board at the participating hospital" (Schwarz et al., 2008, p. 19) and that the journal it was published in, Progress in Cardiovascular Nursing, has a lengthy editorial board of some 50 odd members.
7) There was not necessarily a conflict of interest in this study, or any way for the researchers to profit financially from it. However, it would have been extremely useful for analyzing the cost involved between the control and the intervention group to have quantified the number of doctor visits (and costs associated with them) between these two groups. Health care costs…
