Mental Health Issues Assignment Discussion Paper

The area of interest is nursing practice, particularly the missed communication opportunities at nursing handover. This is an issue of concern in the care of older adults with mental health issues as the communication at handover must be comprehensive enough to capture what the patient may not necessarily communicate. In fact, an effective handover communication should be able to capture the relevant clinical content to ensure that the right people get the right information at the right time to make the right interpretations and undertake the right actions (Koutoukidis & Stainton, 2020). There is a need to engage the nurses’ population to collect their opinions on handover communication, how it can be improved, and whether the changes (improvements) are effective. Other than nurses, the study can also engage other medical personnel and patients as a researchable population. Other medical personnel can offer significant insight into nurse handover, with useful opinions on where changes and improvements can be made. In addition, patients can also be a good study population as they are the recipients of care and can inform on changes in handover communication affects their perceptions of care effectiveness as well as satisfaction levels with the nursing care (Gray & Grove, 2020)Mental Health Issues Assignment Discussion Paper.

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As has been indicated, the selected researchable population that will be used in the study is nurses at the facility. That is because the research study applies to them. Any changes in the nursing handover communication would directly apply to the nurses at the facility. In addition, nurses at the facility are appropriate for the study as they are a subset of nurses as the target population. Besides that, sampling nurses at the facility adds to the merit of the study, as it would present a homogenous sample with clear generalizability (Schmidt & Brown, 2019) Mental Health Issues Assignment Discussion Paper.

Sampling nurses at the facility for the research study involves targeting and selecting nurses as research subjects from within the larger population of nurses at the facility. The sample should be selected based on the research purpose, available resources, and desired degree of generalization. Ideally, the sample should represent the entire target population. For the sample to be representative, it must have the characteristic of the target population in terms of the proportions found in the target population. This understanding identifies the first challenge since it is important to ensure that the sample is representative of the target population (Bemker & Schreiner, 2017)Mental Health Issues Assignment Discussion Paper.

Towards this end, a sample size formula will be applied to determine the appropriate number of nurses whose inclusion in the research would represent the population of nurses at the facility. The sample size will be broken down into demographic subgroups (such as unit/department, and professional experience) so that the total sample achieved represents the entire population. Additionally, confidence interval, confidence level, standard deviation and population size will be considered in calculating the sample size. Using a sample size formula ensures that just the right sample size is recruited. That is because, if the sample size is too small, then the study would not yield valid results that adequately represent the reality of the nurse population at the facility. On the other hand, if the sample size is too large, then it would increase the time and cost of conducting the study (Bemker & Schreiner, 2017)Mental Health Issues Assignment Discussion Paper.

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Another challenge is using an appropriate data collection approach. An appropriate approach would ensure the relevance, completeness and accuracy of the collected data so that the analysis is accurate. In addition, it ensures that the data is collected ethically and legally. An appropriate approach is the use of surveys (questionnaires) that collect both qualitative and quantitative data from the sample of nurses. A survey would provide a sense of areas that can be improved even as the change proceeds. Because a survey can be administered digitally (online) or physically, it represents the opportunity for distribution of scale. Besides that, a survey is inexpensive, especially when delivered digitally using a free questionnaire tool (Gray & Grove, 2020)Mental Health Issues Assignment Discussion Paper.

References

Bemker, M., & Schreiner, B. (Eds.) (2017). The DNP Degree & Capstone Project: A Practical Guide. DEStech Publications, Inc.

Gray, J. R., & Grove, S. K. (2020). Burns and Grove’s the practice of nursing research: Appraisal, synthesis, and generation of evidence (9th ed.). Elsevier, Inc.

Koutoukidis, G., & Stainton, K. (2020). Tabbner’s Nursing Care: Theory and Practice. Elsevier, Inc.

Schmidt, N., & Brown, J. (2019). Evidence-Based Practice for Nurses: Appraisal and Application of Research (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.

Mental Health Issues Assignment Discussion Paper