NURS 460: Nursing Research
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How to Use Research Findings

How to Include Dr. Johnson's Sensory Information in Your Patient Teaching

Research Utilization:

  1. Identify the steps of the procedures or stressful event you are interested in.
  2. List what you perceive would have a sensory effect on the patient (whatever relates to seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, hearing).
  3. Ask present patients for their perceptions. For example: How did you feel during the procedure?
  4. Select the typical sensory experiences described by 50% to 60% of the patients.
  5. Choose several words to describe the sensations.
  6. Use the patient’s words.
  7. Give this sensory information to new patients in your preparing them for the procedure.
  8. Hit the high points, the things that almost everybody perceives.
  9. Use the word "pain" sparingly. Instead say to patients "some procedures may cause discomfort, But when sensations are described by patients as painful, use the word "pain."

Some cautions:

  1. Remember that sensory information should include the procedural information that is typically given.
  2. If you are to perform the procedure yourself, repeat the sensory information as you proceed.
  3. Use aids when feasible. For example, in the cast-remove study, a recording of the sound of the saw was used.
  4. Share your knowledge with other nurses.
  5. Don’t try to describe how severe the "pain" might be or how much sensation might be felt.
  6. Don’t substitute sensory information for procedural information or instruction in exercises, ambulation, relaxation, or other patient activities. Information about sensations complements other instruction.
  7. Don’t describe sensations that patients only rarely associate with a procedure.
  8. Don’t tell the patient that the sensory information you are giving him is meant to reduce distress.
  9. Don’t try to teach the patient how to cope with the threatening event.
  10. Don’t expect patients to rave about how easy the procedure was because of the sensory information.
  11. Let your reward be a sense of evidence-based practice.

Evaluation of Research Put into Practice or Research Utilization

Let using research in your practice be your reward. Compare patients who haven’t received sensory information with those who have on outcomes. You’ll find that nurses have to spend less time with the informed patients and you’ll see that these patients are more comfortable and able to cooperate after the procedure. With surgical patients, you can keep track of the postoperative course, amount of pain medication needed, whether your patients are ambulating freely, whether they seem less nervous than others and whether they are easier to take care of.

Now read how other nurses have used Dr. Johnson's research.
 

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