¶ … quality improvement, research, and evidence-based practice manuscripts," Oermann, Turner & Carman (2014) show how the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE) guidelines can be used to promote quality in healthcare. The authors first discuss the way the SQUIRE guidelines work and what they entail, showing how they are designed to promote clarity. The SQUIRE guidelines outline the findings of the research in ways that are unequivocal, while the authors also note how researchers will include the parameters of the study. Moreover, SQUIRE guidelines can help researchers to plan and outline a proposed study. The SQUIRE guidelines also dictate a recommended number of pages for the report and its component sections like the Abstract. As Oermann, Turner & Carmen (2014) point out, the SQUIRE guidelines also help researchers organize their data into presentable forms for the reader, including recommended section headers and formatting. Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion have become the industry standard for report organization thanks to the SQUIRE recommendations.
Examples like those given by Oermann, Turner & Carman (2014) like "Implementation of the Josie King Care Journal in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit" demonstrate the SQUIRE guidelines in action. The introduction provides an overview of the problem, an explanation of why the study was important or warranted, the scope of the problem in terms of general or specific statistics, and other types of background data necessary to present the results of the current study. The methods section is where the authors discuss their population sample, methods used to acquire the sample and the research design. The example used was a 16-bed unit, using qualitative methods like surveys. In the results section, the authors list either the qualitative or quantitative results in raw format. The discussion section is where the authors can analyze the importance of the results and whether those results substantiate the initial research hypothesis. Finally, the conclusion of the SQUIRE-formatted report talks about limitations of the research and provides suggestions for further research in the same subject areas.
References
Oermann, M.H., Turner, K. & Carman, M. (2014). Preparing quality improvement, research, and evidence-based practice manuscripts. Nursing Economics 32(2).
