Sources of evidence in research and practice

EXPLORING EVIDENCE: NURSING PRACTICE

Exploration of Evidence Sources

The practice problem focuses on correcting the high incidence of medication errors at the selected practice setting. From the nursing perspective, a medication error is any deviation from the procedures, policies, and best practices of medication administration (Albaradi et al., 2021). The nursing literature identifies a variety of strategies that healthcare organizations could use to minimize the risk of medication errors. These include conducting medication safety education for staff, installing alarm notification systems, investing in electronic systems that allow for seamless communication between physicians and pharmacists, and using physician order entries in place of handwritten prescriptions to enhance legibility (Albaradi et al., 2021). However, deciding on the best course of action requires an exploration of sources outside the medical field to obtain a holistic picture of how organizations in other industries have addressed similar problems and what challenges they have faced. This will ensure that the project team is better prepared to handle any challenges that may arise from implementing the selected solution.

Alternative Sources of Evidence Explored

To address the practice problem, the researcher kept their main focus on library databases related to the medical field, including BioMed Central, Cochrane, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researcher conducted a search using the following key words drawn from these PICOT question: medication errors, medication safety education, notification alarm AND reducing medication errors. These sources mainly provided information on what constitutes medication errors, the types of medication errors, causes, and strategies for reducing the risk of the same. As the search sought to obtain data on an intervention, the researcher prioritized systematic reviews and meta analyses, which compare the findings of different studies using statistical analysis (Stillwell et al., 2010).

However, the researcher sought additional information on the topic from business and economics databases, more specifically the Journal of Business and Economics, Business eBooks, Research Gate, Science Direct, and Emerald Insight. The researcher conducted a search on these databases as well as a general search on Google using the keywords: medication errors AND workplace errors AND minimizing workplace errors. The search criteria yielded a range of relevant articles that generally identified the primary causes of errors in the workplace and strategies that organizations have used to address the same.

Impact of not Including Data from a Range of Sources

When a researcher fails to explore a wide range of data sources, they are likely to generate flawed evidence, which could lead them to draw wrong conclusions about the problem being addressed. First, by failing to explore sources outside the typical locations, a researcher generates limited evidence that ignores the perspectives of researchers in other industries (National Academies Press, 2017). For instance, studies outside the realm of nursing may use different criteria in categorizing errors that occur at the workplace than that used by nursing-related research (National Academies Press, 2017). By considering the perspectives presented in these studies, the researcher could understand the commonalities between workplace errors and medication errors, and even identify potential causes of errors that may not have been covered in the typical nursing literature.