Research Priorities Assignment Paper
The purpose of this learning activity is to familiarize students with interprofessional organizations, their current research priorities, and rationale for their priorities.
After reviewing the resources provided for this week, consider the concept of \”research priorities\”. Explore professional nursing organizations and identify two nursing research priorities from those organizations. Next, explore one other profession (e.g., social work, pharmacy, physical therapy, respiratory therapy, counseling) and identify one research priority from that profession. Provide a link for each of the organizations you have selected. What similar needs/priorities can you determine across two or more professions? How do/will the identified research priorities contribute to professional health care practice?
Research Priorities
After reviewing the resources provided for this week, consider the concept of \”research priorities\”. Explore professional nursing organizations and identify two nursing research priorities from those organizations.
The reviewed professional nursing organizations are hospital facilities that provide intensive care services to persons who are very ill. These services are provided in intensive care units (ICUs) that contain sophisticated medical equipment to monitor the patient and as staffed by special trained medical personnel. The selected organization is the Albany Medical Center Hospital that has an ICU (Albany Medical College). A key concern in the ICU is whether or not others can make decisions to limit life sustaining treatment for a patient who is incapable of making such decisions. Most patients in the ICU who are unconscious either recover their mental functions or die within a few days, and this rapidly resolves the problem. However, there are some patients who can linger in the vegetative state within the ICU for weeks, months and years whereby the patient is unaware of his/her environment. Some of these patients would eventually regain their conscious with full psychological awareness. This raises the research question about whether or not others can make decisions to limit life sustaining treatment for an ICU patient who is incapable of making such decisions (Razban et al., 2016).
Another concern is hospital acquired infections. The nature of the ICU environment supports care generalization such that patients will have different health care concerns with the commonality being that the patients are very ill and require intensive care supported by medical technologies. Placing patients with different health concerns creates opportunities for cross infections, especially within the closed ICU environment where the same medical personnel handle different patients, and can transmit the microbial pathogens between the patients. Research Priorities Assignment Paper This raises the research question about the hospital acquired infection incidences in the ICU environment.
Next, explore one other profession (e.g., social work, pharmacy, physical therapy, respiratory therapy, counseling) and identify one research priority from that profession. Provide a link for each of the organizations you have selected.
The other profession that has been explored is counseling/psychotherapy. This profession typically works with addicts. The selected organization is the Addiction Care Center of Albany, a facility that has been operational since 1967 and provides addiction treatment services (The Addiction Care Center of Albany, 2020). A research priority from the organization and counseling/psychotherapy profession is the development of an effective treatment strategy for addiction that works speedily without negative side effects. Unlike other sciences based on hard evidence, counseling and psychotherapy is mostly based on conjecture such that treatment approaches will not necessarily have the same effects with the same populations. Developing treatment approaches with identical outcomes for the same populations would be important in controlling treatment outcomes (Nadkarni et al., 2017).
What similar needs/priorities can you determine across two or more professions?
A similar need across the nursing and counseling professions is the developing of effective treatments with predictable outcomes. The two professions are grappling with the awareness that some percentage of patients/clients will react differently when provided with the same therapies, even if they are from the same populations. This introduces an element of risk. Eliminating the treatment uncertainty and risk is a priority for the two professions (Mackingtosh & Armstrong, 2020).
How do/will the identified research priorities contribute to professional health care practice?
Treatment uncertainties and risks contribute to professional health care practice by creating caution in the provision of health care. Medical personnel must keenly monitor patients through treatment in order to speedily identify the occurrence of uncertainties. This takes up much time. If the uncertainties could be eliminated, then medical personnel could spend time in other activities that improve health care quality (Mackingtosh & Armstrong, 2020).
References
Albany Medical College (2020). Pediatric Critical and Intensive Care. https://www.amc.edu/patient/services/childrens_hospital/pediatric_intensive_care/index.cfm
Mackingtosh, N., & Armstrong, N. (2020). Understanding and managing uncertainty in health care: revisiting and advancing sociological contributions. Sociology of Health & Illness, 42(S1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13160
Nadkarni, A., Weobong, B., Weiss, H., McCambridge, J., Bhat, B., … & Patel, V. (2017). Counselling for Alcohol Problems (CAP), a lay counsellor-delivered brief psychological treatment for harmful drinking in men, in primary care in India: a randomised controlled trial. The Lancet, 389(10065), 186-195. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)31590-2
Razban, F., Iranmanesh, S., Aliabadi, H., & Forouzi, M. (2016). Critical care nurses’ attitude towards life-sustaining treatments in South East Iran. World Journal of Emergency Medicine, 7(1), 59-64. World Journal of Emergency Medicine, 7(1), 59-64. https://doi.org/10.5847/wjem.j.1920-8642.2016.01.011
The Addiction Care Center of Albany (2020). Welcome to The Addictions Care Center of Albany, Inc. https://theacca.Research Priorities Assignment Paper