Issues in Developing Research Proposals on Quality/Outline for Paper

Issues associated with research on quality. Type into the form the strategies to use to design rigorous methods for a population study you will conduct in the future. The strategies you outline here provide the basis for your required paper and seminar presentation.

Read every section of the table before beginning. First select a topic on quality and a specific population for your research including gender, age and ethnicity characteristics. Then describe a nursing intervention that you believe enhances their quality of care or quality of life. For example, quality of an outpatient clinic service or a videotape for post home care or preoperative preparation self-directed kit or quality of care of homeless families utilizing a nurse managed "nutrition take-out" site. After selecting the quality topic to study, define a narrow population and type out your research questions.

Then address in detail all questions in the table below incorporating the factors and considerations below. Print your proposal by clicking the "Ready to Print" button at the end of this document.

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Issues in Conducting Quality Research
Health care providers are increasingly directing their attention to how illness and its treatment impact on the overall quality of life (QOL) of their patients, not only on patient mortality and morbidity.	QOL assessments are now frequently incorporated into research and clinical trials on drugs, devices, nursing systems or therapeutic interventions.	Nurses must be prepared to conduct studies that evaluate quality or test the impact of specific nursing interventions on quality of life.
Type your response here. Issues in Conducting Quality Research Quality topic to be studied: Population to be studied: Research questions:
How to measure quality?	Should the research and methods be quantitative, qualitative (possibly grounded theory interviews) or a combination of both?	Factors used to decide: Privacy available for interviewing or observation of nursing care quality Personnel resources Data type needed to answer your research questions or address the hypotheses Ease of access issues (e.g. severity of illness, complexity of health promotion or privacy of information) Patients at different stages of illness Educational level and wording if self-completed questionnaires
Type your response here. How to measure quality?
If a quantitative approach is chosen, which instrument to use?	Should generic, general, overall quality or health related quality or specific quality instruments for a certain illness or interventions be used?	Pros and cons of these: Generic instruments allow comparability of results across different types of patients or normative groups General or well being measures have a broader array of quality dimensions Disease- or intervention-specific instruments provide more detailed information Limited in types of dimensions assessed
Type your response here. If a quantitative approach is chosen, which instrument to use?
Which dimensions of quality to measure?	Multiple versus single dimensions of quality have been studied extensively by researchers, ethicists, sociologists, policy-makers and others. Which dimensions best fit your study questions?	Considerations include: Assess only those dimensions directly affected by the nursing care under study such as functional capacity or physiologic outcomes Effects of treatment (e.g. nausea/vomiting in chemotherapy) Approach broader, recognizing that health care system factors can impact even economic aspects of quality Other domains of the patient's life (e.g. work, leisure activities, relationships, etc.) Not miss crucial events or important data points
Type your response here. Which dimensions of quality to measure?
How often and when should quality assessments be done?	Longitudinal studies, time-sersis following intervention designs and one time data collection (inability to obtain pre-intervention measures) and the method you elect to use to obtain quality data all influence the numbers of data points. How often and when would you ideally measure quality?	Based on knowledge of the illness trajectory and the treatment Signposts of intervention success or failure Repeated baseline measures prior to intervention Predicted withdrawal from study or other missing data Completion of therapy or intervention Repeated measures over the course of recovery to ascertain which aspects of QOL intervention impacts Significance of the problem under study Length untoward side effects might persist Data analysis issues
Type your response here. How often and when should quality assessments be done?
Who should be target of a data collection and what level of data analysis?	QOL and quality of care data is needed from individual points of view, populations or group of persons, and government or managed care agencies. Determine if your proposal can include interventions is cost-benefit and/or interdisciplinary findings relative to quality?
Type your response here. Who should be target of a data collection and what level of data analysis?
Who should your data be reported to? Reports are always sent to the funding agency, research colleagues, clinical setting personnel, interdisciplinary audiences, professional and lay journals. Typically, subjects studied are told a summary will be made available for them.	It's often said "your study is not really research until your findings are appropriately disseminated or published." What would a summary of your study contain (e.g. scientific abstract, layman's language summary of findings only, description of clinical significance) for those listed in the next column?	Select one and describe: Patient Family Health Care Professional Health Care Agency
Type your response here. Who should your data be reported to?

*All bolded items are required to be expanded in the paper.

References

Jalowiec, A. (1990). Issues in using multiple measure of QOL. Seminars in Oncology Nursing, 6, 271-277.

Smith, C., & Gaskamp, C. (1998). Research in quality of life. In (Joyce Fitzpatrick, Ed.), Encyclopedia of Nursing.

Smith, C., & Klienbeck, SVM (1996). Nutrition and quality of life measurement. In B Spilker (Ed.), Quality of Life & Pharmacokinetics in Clinical Trials (2nd ed., p. 1063-1075). Philadelphia: Raven Press.

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