The discussion does mention the limitations of the study and they were discussed with minimal distortion or bias. The researcher did compare the current study to previous studies which did show how effective and reliable this study was in finding the answer to the research questions (Crookes & Davies 2004).
The relevance of this study to the chosen research question is that within this study it highlights the need for more staff as the workload of nurses is in fact putting patients at risk as there are reported medication errors due to time constraints as well as tasks not being finished on each shift and as an ultimate response the patient is the one who suffers.
Article 2 – Schubert, M, Clarke, S, Glass, T, Schaffert-Witvliet, B & De Geest, S 2009, Identifying thresholds for relationships between impacts of rationing of nursing care and nurse and patient reported outcomes in Swiss hospitals: A correlational study, International Journal of Nursing Staff, no,46, October, pp. 884-893, online science direct This research article aims at investigating the rationing of nurses in Switzerland and patient outcomes to do with the rationing of nurses (nursing shortage).
The background of the study explains that the rationing of nurses effects on patient safety and quality of care. The study was used with a cross sectional multi centre study. The study was set at five Swiss German and three Swiss French hospitals including a total of 1338 nurses and 779 patients. There was a survey conducted using appropriate descriptive measures as well as logistic regression models. The results found within this study allowed the outsider to see that with the shortage of nurses there has been increased infections, pressure ulcers, and patient dissatisfaction in which all are negative factors.
In conclusion to this research it shows that with a shortening supply of nurses and the increasingly high inpatient ratios, the patient quality of care and safety is on the decrease (Schubert et al 2009). This article has strengths of identifying to the reader what is already known about the topic and what this study will add to knowledge about the topic. The limitations of the opening of the paper include that of describing the study. It describes the paper as to how the rationing of nurses impacts upon six significant studied patient outcomes.
The author did not explain or describe what the six patient outcomes were in this opening sentence. This is a limitation as it can cause the reader to become bewildered and it is apparent the study is not easily understood. Once again this study appears to have no apparent keywords described and explained (Groot 2009). There is no clearly labelled literature review in this study but as it was further looked into the background contained information of which is usually in the literature review. The literature review seems thorough and does report previous studies and findings in relation to the current study (Groot 2009).
There are major findings found and reported in this article and are citied to provide evidence of reliability. Strengths to this are that all studies in which are mentioned are primary research reports which can conclude the author used appropriate resources (Groot 2009). Strengths of the study are that it appropriately mentions the type of methods used including a cross sectional survey. By mentioning the type of methods used the author is allowing the reader to know exactly how the research was conducted and this provides reassurance to the validity of the research (Crookes & Davies 2004).
The research mentioned the number of nurses as well as the number of patients who were involved in the study. The study failed to mention dropout rates. There was evidence of ethical issues being looked after as there was a mention of consent been received by every patient as well as having been approved by 7 ethics committees. A limitation was that there were a large disproportionate number of nurses in the study compared to patients which can create bias on one end from the nurses compared to that of the patient’s views (Crookes & Davies 2004).