Critical appraisal in clinical practice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Critical appraisal in clinical practice - Essay Example It is of particular interest to me because various studies have been carried out on pain management and assessment, and I believe that establishing which studies provide the best evidence on care would also assist me in my delivery of health services (Hammer and Collinson, 1999). This paper shall first present the method by which the studies were selected. It shall be followed by the critical summaries and then by the appraisal of method. Finally, a synthesis of findings and reflection on practice will also be presented. Body Selection of papers In the selection of the papers, I entered the following search words in Google Scholar; post-operative + nursing care, post-operative issues + nursing, pain assessment + post-operative nursing. Search results were further narrowed down using the following additional parameters: past 10 years, and results from the following databases: EMBASE, CINAHL, PubMed, and the Cochrane databases. Articles found were further narrowed down based on advance d search parameters, covering meta-analysis and other scholarly types of research. The credibility of the authors was also evaluated, assessing their expertise on the subject of the research. Critical summaries In the study by Blondal and Halldorsdottir (2008), the authors attempted to establish a though understanding of nurses’ experiences in the management of patients in pain. The authors understood that despite improved knowledge on patient care, these patients were still suffering from issues in relation to pain and nurses are the primary health professionals which can help relieve these symptoms. The authors carried out their study as a phenomenological study covering 20 dialogues with 10 experienced nurses. The research process revealed that caring for patients in pain is a major challenge for many nurses and nurses seem to feel a moral obligation to ease patient’s pain. Moreover, these nurses feel that they face a challenge in managing patient’s pain in t erms of how they read their patient, how they deal with moral conflicts, and organizational issues. The authors also concluded that nurses require different patterns of knowledge and a favourable work environment in order to improve their pain management skills. In the study by Al-Shaer, et.al., (2011), the nurses’ knowledge and attitudes regarding pain assessment and intervention was considered. The authors undertook their study as a non-experimental, descriptive design, based on a convenience sample of 129 registered nurses working in various units of a Midwestern metropolitan hospital. The authors covered registered nurses on their knowledge and attitudes on pain management and the results indicated that their knowledge of pain management principles and interventions seem to be insufficient. Although the results of this study do indicate high knowledge scores, some nurses indicate an inadequate ability to care for patients experiencing pain. The authors were also able to a cknowledge the fact that pain is a subjective experience and that nurses must not base their assessments on their personal beliefs of judgments. Critical review 1. Appraisal of method In the study by Blondal, the problem was specifically and clearly stated by the authors and it had sufficient background information in order to