reviews and round-up
A regular look at recent publications relevant to health care and nursing research
01 Jul 2006
Helena M Priest
Essentials of nursing research: methods, appraisal, and utilization
Perhaps not obvious from the title, this book is designed to guide the reader through the process of finding, reading, and critically evaluating published nursing research, and to consider the practical use to which research findings may be put. The reader is led systematically through the stages of finding published studies (with reference to widely available databases), reviewing them in relation to their ethical implications and theoretical bases, scrutinising their design, sampling, data collection and analysis methods, and evaluating the quality of the data generated. Guidelines for producing a written critique of published studies are provided. The book ends with a focus on using research evidence, referring to key models for evidence-based nursing practice. While barriers to research utilisation are discussed, a greater emphasis on this topic might have been expected, given the inclusion of research utilisation within the book’s title.
01 Jun 2006
Making the most of opportunities..
When asked to contribute to the Making My Mark series, my immediate response was to agree. Once I had done so, I began to wonder what sort of mark I have actually made. For inspiration, I looked back at previous papers in the series, to establish where, in the grand scheme of things, my contribution to nursing and healthcare research might lie. I found papers written by both highly experienced and internationally known researchers and by those just starting out on a research career. My position lies somewhere between these two, and if I can borrow a term coined by a research collaborator, Dr Jeremy Segrott, University of Wales Swansea School of Health Care, I would describe myself as a ‘midiphyte’ (someone with postgraduate training and hands-on research experience, but who has yet to become a totally independent and self-supporting researcher). To borrow a term from another colleague, I also see myself as something of a ‘butterfly’; someone who is still defining a clear research niche and who has engaged with a number of different projects as the need or opportunity has arisen.
01 Dec 2005