 Over the past month or so we have briefly examined how to undertake some basic research and pointers on how to perform a literature review. We are going to continue this theme by looking at how to appropriately critique a research article.
Why bother critiquing?
If you’ve managed to get your hands on peer reviewed articles then you may wonder why it’s necessary for you to perform your own article critique – surely the article will be of good quality if it has made it through the peer review process? Unfortunately this is not always the case. Publication bias can occur when editors only accept manuscripts that have a bearing on the direction of their own research, or reject manuscripts with negative findings. Additionally not all peer reviewers have expert knowledge of the subject matter, which can introduce bias and sometimes a conflict of interest. Performing your own critical analysis of an article allows you to consider its value to you and to your workplace. Critical evaluation is defined as “a systematic way of considering the truthfulness of a piece of research, the results and how relevant and applicable they are”.
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 Whether it is multiple patients, too many call bells, or the needs of co-workers, nurses deal with many different types of stress and have to know how to juggle all of these wildly different people and events clamouring for their attention - with ease.
Sometimes life outside of work can also test a nurse's sense of time management skills, so the skills a nurse learns to manage patients can often help make their home life flow more smoothly. To master how to navigate the stressful waters of nursing work and a hectic home life, a nurse needs to deftly organise the information coming at them, prioritise that information to handle the most important tasks first, and learn to roll with the inevitable interruptions.
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 You stand at the doorway and watch your patient's chest rise and fall. All around him, his family is crying. They are standing there, looking at you, waiting for you to tell them what the doctor said. You don't want to break their hearts, but you can feel your heart breaking inside of you. How many times has this patient come to this hospital? How many time have you had the opportunity – no, the honour – of taking care of him and his family for the day? You have looked at family pictures on the wall. You know all about his prized Pekinese at home that he hasn't seen in eight months because of his illness. You know it all, and now... now...
You are emotionally involved. That's what that lump in your throat means. You need to tell them the truth that the patient will likely not last the night, but you can't because you are having a hard time accepting the information yourself. You don't want it to be true. Tears burn at the corners of your eyes, but you cannot let them fall, not while you wear that uniform. How do you deal with a patient and his or her family when you have become emotionally involved?
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 All nurses have had family members yell at them at one time in their career. Whether it is the irate spouse who blows up in the middle of the ward because his wife is dying or the daughter who tears a nurse apart over some imagined oversight in her mother's care, nurses are often on the front lines of the emotional roller coaster that families experience in the hospital, long-term care, and home care settings.
Even if you work in a doctor's office, you can encounter angry relatives of patients who can become verbally abusive with you. Knowing how to diffuse these situations can sometimes mean the difference between a relative angrily walking out and that person coming to understand that the nurse is only trying to help.
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 A study recently published in the medical journal The Lancet has shown how nursing care makes a significant difference for stoke patients after discharge.
As reported in The Health of Australians 2010, stroke is Australia’s third leading cause of death for men and second for women, and a leading cause of disability.
The implementation of a multidisciplinary supported evidence-based protocol initiated by nurses for the management of fever, hyperglycaemia, and swallowing dysfunction is delivering better outcomes. It is cost effective and improving recovery.
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From department updates to CEO newsletters, personal emails to blog updates, our inboxes are easily packed with the interesting, the boring, the useful and the superfluous.
Tags: Internet, Multi-tasking, Professional Issues, Nursing
Published: October 13, 2011
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Nursing is a 24 hour a day job. People get sick at all hours of the day and night, and they always need someone there to take care of them. When the doctors go home and the other staff are tucked into their beds, night shift nurses are there when the patients condition gets worse the middle of the night, when they have only their wits and their coworkers to count on. Nursing is not an easy job, and nursing by night or rotating shifts makes that job even more difficult.
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 We live and work in a culturally diverse society, caring for people from varied ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. Within Australia we have our culturally rich Indigenous population, as well as many migrants from countries as diverse as Russia, Greece and Korea. This presents a challenge for nursing and midwifery staff to provide care that is both clinically safe and culturally sensitive. Many hospitals have protocols designed to aid staff in understanding and delivering culturally appropriate care, yet in reality it can be difficult to do this. In this post, we’re going to have a look at some theory behind culturally appropriate care, as well as examining a couple of relevant case studies.
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Nursing Blog
There is good news for those of us who dread the thought of putting aside 30 (or more) minutes each day to work out.
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