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Is Cranberry Juice Effective for Preventing and Treating Urinary Track Infection?

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A 65-year-old Chinese woman, who is currently being treated for a suspected urinary tract infection (UTI), has enquired to whether cranberry juice is effective for preventing and treating UTIs. After querying the RN, they too are unsure how effective the therapeutic intervention is. Thus, there must be an investigation utilising evidence-based practice (EBP) to determine the effectiveness of the therapeutic intervention and provide accurate information to the patient. Furthermore, when delivering the information to the patient, culturally appropriate care must be considered, to ensure clear and coherent communication to the patient. EBP provides health professionals a method to use critically appraised and scientifically proven evidence …show more content…

The question was rephrased as a specific, answerable question using PICO, which refined the case study to its core components; postmenopausal women, cranberry juice and UTIs. The advanced search limits were enabled to craft rather precise research strategies, with Boolean operators and wildcards were utilised in the phrase search; postmenopausal wom*n AND cranberr$ juice AND UTIs (Wolf et al., 2013). The search limits of the Cochrane Library were restricted to Cochrane review and trials, and the publication dates from January 2010 to May 2014. From this refined search of the selected databases, eight papers returned from over 8000 results. Evaluating the eight papers for quality evidence was critical when selecting the two papers to utilise. The evidence hierarchy was considered, aiming to use the highest evidence possible, such as systematic reviews and meta-analyses; and randomized, controlled, double-blind studies, to ensure the most accurate evidence informed the clinical decision for the patient (Bloom, Olinzock, Radjenoic & Trice, 2013). When sorting the results, other various factors were also taken into consideration; credibility, reputability, reasonability and support. With these factors taken into account, the two papers selected are highly esteemed in regards to evidence, and are most relevant to the patient (Stichler, 2010). The first paper, selected from the CINAHL database, was the

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