Running Head: ROLES OF A STUDY NURSE 1

Roles of a Study Nurse

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Define contemporary nursing research roles for your current or planned level of practice.

What roles are attractive for you? What makes the role a desirable one?

A nurse’s role has been changing over time with new research and knowledge-base

expansion that now allows a nurse to perform more roles, increasing their scope; A nurse now

takes part in protocol development in research by determining the factors to be considered in the

study, the measures to be used and criterion for the different research outcomes. The nurse also

determines the tests to be conducted in line with the study being done, the clinical data important

for particular studies and handling o studies. A nurse also plays an important role in obtaining

informed consents as they have become an area of interest among the law practitioners. On study

approval and during participant recruitment, a nurse ensures that all legal requirements are met to

prevent legal entanglements. A nurse has a good understanding of the constituents of an

informed consent and as such, provide a good lead on obtaining one within the precincts of law.

With such good foundational knowledge and training, a nurse becomes an important

contact person for patient recruitment. With a good reason, a nurse is often in charge of training

study participants since they have more contact with the patient and as such are able to identify

the best time to approach potential study participants. In many healthcare settings, a nurse is the

first healthcare provider that a patient engages and a nurse is able to conduct screening as early

as during this first contact. In addition, a nurse takes an active role in collecting data and

reporting safety during patient follow-up, especially those selected for clinical trials (Poghosyan,

Boyd, & Knutson, 2014). Among these roles, I find patient recruitment and data collection the

most attractive roles of a nurse. This is because, during the first contact, a nurse is able to

identify deficits in the client's health and use it as a criterion for identifying potential study

participants. In addition, data collection means a nurse can keep track of patient's journey to
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recuperation or worsening of the condition and be the one to report any change in the patient's

condition, providing useful primary data for research and care.

Describe some of the ways nurses can use research in practice. Give an example of a

clinical problem that would benefit from research to determine or confirm the effectiveness

of nursing practice.

Healthcare is highly revolutionary and greatly depends on evidence from research for

best practice (Melnyk, Gallagher-Ford, Long, & Fineout-Overholt, 2014). An ardent nurse will

then find great use in research as it provides evidence for practice and a rationale for providing

care as they do. A nurse then uses research to investigate other more beneficial approaches to

care provision while using the available evidence from credible research already provided to

guide their practice. One of the areas that would benefit from nursing research is wound cleaning

and dressing and how different practices can affect the duration of wound healing. Cleaning of

wounds using iodine and normal saline compared to use of a cleaning agent that contains a

nitroimidazole and comparing the healing time can direct nursing function of wound cleaning to

promote expedited wound healing.

Give an example of a clinical problem that would be solved by qualitative methods. Give an

example of a clinical problem that would be solved using quantitative methods. What

makes the particular method appropriate in each case? For example a qualitative clinical

problem might be: How do patients with chronic pulmonary hypertension respond to a

lung transplant? A clinical problem that might be solved by a quantitative clinical problem

might be: What are the effects of early ambulation (within 24 hrs) and later ambulation

( after 24 hours) on the rate of postoperative nausea in patients undergoing by-pass

surgery?
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One of the problems that can be solved by qualitative methods is how nursing handover

reports affects continuity of nursing care among patients. A quantitative method can provide

useful information on how the number of nursing staff to patient ratio affects the quality of care

provided. In choosing the appropriate method, factors such as dependent and independent factors

are considered as well as the outcome of the study being investigated. These factors play a major

role in determining the type of study to be utilized. Qualitative studies are often used in

evaluating outcomes that are uncountable (Brannen, 2017) such as quality of care while a

quantitative method is often used for countable outcomes such as the number of readmissions

following a certain intervention.

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References

Brannen, J. (2017). Mixing methods: Qualitative and quantitative research. Routledge.

Melnyk, B. M., Gallagher-Ford, L., Long, L. E., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2014). The

establishment of evidence-based practice competencies for practicing registered nurses

and advanced practice nurses in real-world clinical settings: Proficiencies to improve

healthcare quality, reliability, patient outcomes, and costs. Worldviews on Evidence-

Based Nursing, 11(1), 5–15.

Poghosyan, L., Boyd, D., & Knutson, A. R. (2014). Nurse practitioner role, independent practice,

and teamwork in primary care. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 10(7), 472–479.