Qualitative Research: Understanding Human Experiences

The shift report is an integral component of patient care due to the fact that it advances patient safety and maintains continuity of care. Shift reporting promotes best practices through communication among nursing staff, therefore, promoting professional socialization. Furthermore, shift report influences staff retention and quality of patient care by improving informational, social and organizational functions. The expertise and knowledge in shift reporting can be used to promote interdependence and teamwork. When compared to traditional reporting, bedside shift reporting has such advantages as enhancing time management, social interaction, peer support and procedural training. Shift reports taken and given at the bedside benefit patients as well. Many patients have expressed improved satisfaction and nursing accountability with bedside shift reports. For instance, an orthopedic unit manager, who dropped the traditional staffroom reporting and handover and replaced it with a patient-led system, reported increased patient satisfaction because her patients felt that they were in control.

together with the same reactants used before. Thirdly, mix 0.1M Na2SO4 with those reactants. Then, mix 0.1M NaOH with the same reactants used before again.

Bedside reporting involves giving information or a report to the oncoming nurse in the presence of a patient. This method gives the patient an opportunity to ask questions and get clarification regarding his or her care. Bedside reporting increases patient satisfaction, quality of healthcare and nurse-to-nurse responsibility. Hospitals need to design a better handoff process that can easily reduce patient risks and increase patients’ involvement in their care. Emergency rooms shift reports usually take place at the nursing station of every patient care area. The departing nurse gives information verbally to the oncoming shift. Therefore,

Bedside reporting has the primary function of sharing patient information between nurses, as they change shifts. The nurse ending their shift would report all the changes that have occurred in the state of the patient and all measures which have been taken for the respective patient. This information would be transmitted to the nurse commencing her shift, who would then write and further transmit all patient information occurring during their shift, to the nurse coming to replace them.

Bedside shift reporting, is it necessary? Baker (2010) states that is has its benefits, from patient safety, increased patient involvement and staff teamwork, ownership and accountability.” (Baker, 2010) To promote stronger engagement, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality developed the Guide to Patient and Family Engagement in Hospital Quality and Safety for bedside reporting. (AHRQ, 2013)

First, baseline data were collected on nurse perceptions about the shift report process and patient perceptions about nursing care were. The authors adopted the ‘Patient Views on Nursing Care’ patient survey tool (Larrabee et al. 1995) to perform the survey. Then same data were collected and analyzed three months and 13 months after the new approach was implemented. The data analysis approach included analysis of variance(ANOVA) to compare data collected during the baseline survey and data collected after the new approach was implemented.

Not everyone is open to change, and some nurses feel that bedside reporting may interfere with patient privacy and patient well-being, which could lead to non-compliance.(Joshi, Currier, & O'Brien, 2011). Nurses might feel unsure about what exactly bedside reporting is, and what it should include in terms of the nursing need-to-know versus the patient need-to-know (Joshi, Currier, & O'Brien, 2011). In situations such as this, the Nurse Bedside Shift Report: Implementation Handbook would be beneficial to any hospital considering the implementation of bedside report. It would be used as a uniform standard of care, and take the guesswork out of what is actually expected of the nursing

Communication in shift change plays a major role in the nursing practice and role. Appropriate and effective communication is a tool assisting nurses in providing safe, thorough and quality cares about their patients and ensuring there is continued service delivery. Realizing the critical role of their patients and patients’ families in promoting patient safety, nurses need to engage their patients and family members in the whole communication process of exchanging information and planning the care. Nurses need to give their patients chances to participate in the discussion their health conditions, upcoming procedures, medical information, or treatment options. Bedside reporting give nurses opportunities to visualize the physical and psychological needs of their patients. Change of shift reporting is also a situation where the nurses exchange their clinical knowledge, and patients’ condition changes and allow their patients to express their understandings, concerns, and questions. This paper seeks to analyze bedside report and explain its relevance to the nursing practice.

The solutions to these problems are often expected from outside the medical field, but the quality and efficiency of the medical act can also be improved from the internal environment. In such a setting then, the current project proposes the improvement of bedside reporting by nurses at the change of shifts.

However, the purpose of these nurse’s studies showing that, the bedside nurses shift report is the accurate one, because researches showing that, the benefits of bedside reports including increased nurse to nurse responsibility, increases hours of direct care spend with patients, improvements of passing information, relationship between shit, accurateness of report, and amount of patient data convey, provides quality of batter health care and better patient

Evidence also supports that bedside shift reporting is financially beneficial for staff nurses and nursing management. The average report time is significantly decreased from an average of 45 minutes to 29 minutes (Gregory, et al., 2014). This reduces overtime and saves hospitals money. Nurses’ satisfaction is improved because they get to end their shift on time. They get to proceed with shift report more quickly, with fewer distractions and in real time (when compared with writing or recording report). Increase in nursing satisfaction reduces turn over and, once again, saves hospitals money (Gregory, et al., 2014).

Qualitative research can often be labelled as biased and anecdotal however Anderson (2010) argues that when carried out rigorously it can be unbiased, in-depth and creditable, in fact becoming a leading research method for evidence based nursing. White (2006) explains that when the research is based on people’s perceptions then qualitative research is appropriate, it aids in developing an understanding for peoples understanding, feelings values and opinions. Qualitative research seeks to develop explanations for social trends/events, thus encouraging detail and depth whilst creating openness (Bamberger, 2000). In addition IVONNE (2004) reasons that qualitative research gives brand new insights by providing differing ideas on current practices. On the other hand, Abawl (2008) highlights that data collection can be very time consuming, open to interpretation and consequently influenced by researcher bias.

In the first article chosen, “Why are Nurses Leaving? Findings From an Initial Qualitative Study on Nursing Attrition,” the research method used was qualitative. The specific type of research design used was phenomenology. The participants were interviewed about their person experience of what it was like working as a registered nurse. The research question for this study was, “What is the experience of RNs who leave clinical nursing?” The sample is registered nurses (RN) with a minimum of 1 year of clinical practice and no clinical practice in the last 6 months. The sample size was ten, which were a majority of females (80%),

Qualitative research seeks to answer the “why” and not the “how” of the research project that is being conducted, this is done through a complex system of analyzing unstructured information such as survey’s , questionnaires, interviews, interview transcripts, open end survey’s, focus groups, observations, emails, notes, video’s, feed back forms and photo’s; most of the time a qualitative report won’t depend on statistical evidence alone it must be accompanied by detailed facts and proven facts and not hypotheses or in accurate data, this can lead to misunderstanding of data findings and can through the whole aim of the research project off and waste valuable time.

Qualitative research is a technique of promoting research that stresses the quality according to the user’s point of view and approaches. In depth interviews and focus groups are best examples of qualitative research. [Laura Lake, 2009]