research critique

Critical appraisal of a nursing quantitative study

Proper hand hygiene decreased infections in the hospital, reduced the length of hospital stays and decreased costs for patients and the hospital. Most importantly, the practice decreased morbidity rates (Rebecca Mayer Knutsen, 2013). This paper will critic the nursing quantitative study entitled, “The impact of workload on hygiene compliance in nursing” by Knoll, Lautenschlaeger, and Borneff-Lipp

Protection of human participants

The authors do not identify any benefit or risk of participation. It is silent on the significance of the research to the research participants through may benefits and risks exist that the authors could have addressed. One of the potential benefits is critical exposure of the nurse participants their levels of hygiene compliance despite work load and is important of self evaluation for personal competence improvements. The participants could also develop a better understanding of mediator roles of external factors on the nurses’ motivation and ability to comply with standards. This could then inform the nurses for self initiatives to managing the environmental factors towards higher level competence and compliance to hygiene standards and other standards. The major risk that the authors do not identify is possible psychological effects of the nurses knowledge of their lack of compliance because of the potential consequences of the non compliance to quality of delivered services.

The authors are also silent on the process of recruiting research participants. There was however informed consent from research participants and administrator of the hospital facility that was used for data collection. Existence of informed consent further suggests voluntary pa...

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...e of training on the level of compliance with hygiene requirements. They recommend training on hygiene but notes that such trainings may not be 100 percent effective. Their interpretation also identify negative effects of external factors on nurses’ ability comply with hygiene standards. The findings are valid and the applied research methodology and research scope supports this. quantitative research methods ensures high level of data validity and the applied data collection methods that facilitates researchers’ ability to verify offered data supports this. The study also applied two data collection techniques and multiple data sets that established the role of triangulation in ensuring validity and accuracy. These, together with application of statistical tools such as regression analysis and descriptive statistics develop my confidence in the research findings.