Week 3: Clinical Inquiry Discussion
When you first went to work for your current organization, experienced colleagues may have shared with you details about processes and procedures. Perhaps you even attended an orientation session to brief you on these matters. As a “rookie,” you likely kept the nature of your questions to those with answers that would best help you perform your new role.
Over time and with experience, perhaps you recognized aspects of these processes and procedures that you wanted to question further. This is the realm of clinical inquiry.
Clinical inquiry is the practice of asking questions about clinical practice. To continuously improve patient care, all nurses should consistently use clinical inquiry to question why they are doing something the way they are doing it. Do they know why it is done this way, or is it just because we have always done it this way? Is it a common practice or a best practice? Possibly as time passed and as you gained more expertise, you became aware of particular facets of these processes and procedures that you wished to investigate deeper. This falls under the purview of clinical investigation.
The process of doing research by asking questions about existing clinical practices is known as clinical inquiry. Every nurse should make it a habit to engage in clinical inquiry and regularly challenge the rationale behind the ways in which they provide care to patients. This will allow for the ongoing improvement of patient care. Do they understand the reasoning behind doing it this way, or is it simply something that has always been done this way? Is this a standard procedure or one of the recommended procedures?
In this Assignment, you will identify clinical areas of interest and inquiry and practice searching for research in support of maintaining or changing these practices. You will also analyze this research to compare research methodologies employed.
To Prepare:
Review the Resources and identify a clinical issue of interest that can form the basis of a clinical inquiry. Week 3: Clinical Inquiry Discussion
Based on the clinical issue of interest and using keywords related to the clinical issue of interest, search at least four different databases in the Walden Library to identify at least four relevant peer-reviewed articles related to your clinical issue of interest. You should not be using systematic reviews for this assignment, select original research articles.
Review the results of your peer-reviewed research and reflect on the process of using an unfiltered database to search for peer-reviewed research.
Reflect on the types of research methodologies contained in the four relevant peer-reviewed articles you selected.
Part 1: An Introduction to Clinical Inquiry
Create a 4- to 5-slide PowerPoint presentation in which you do the following:
Identify and briefly describe your chosen clinical issue of interest. This clinical issue will remain the same for the entire course and will be the basis for the development of your PICOT question
Describe how you used keywords to search on your chosen clinical issue of interest.
Identify the four research databases that you used to conduct your search for the peer-reviewed articles you selected.
Provide APA citations of the four peer-reviewed articles you selected.
Part 2: Identifying Research Methodologies
After reading each of the four peer-reviewed articles you selected, use the Matrix Worksheet template to analyze the methodologies applied in each of the four peer-reviewed articles. Your analysis should include the following:
The full citation of each peer-reviewed article in APA format.
A brief (1-paragraph) statement explaining why you chose this peer-reviewed article and/or how it relates to your clinical issue of interest, including a brief explanation of the ethics of research related to your clinical issue of interest.
A brief (1-2 paragraph) description of the aims of the research of each peer-reviewed article.
A brief (1-2 paragraph) description of the research methodology used. Be sure to identify if the methodology used was qualitative, quantitative, or a mixed-methods approach. Be specific.
A brief (1- to 2-paragraph) description of the strengths of each of the research methodologies used, including reliability and validity of how the methodology was applied in each of the peer-reviewed articles you selected.
