Summarizing a nursing research article.

Writing a summary of a research article or a journal is the process of highlighting and presenting a focused and concise overview of a completed research study. Writing and summarizing a research article is a common task for a postgraduate students and research scholars. Read more about how to summarize the research article?

ARTICLE #1

Title: Awareness of Palliative Care Among Diploma Nursing Students

Palliative care is care given to improve the quality of life of patients who have a serious or life-threatening disease, such as cancer. The goal is not to cure. Palliative care is also called comfort care, supportive care, and symptom management. So in this regard, the nurses need to be well versed with the knowledge and positive attitude towards achieving this goal when dealing with such patients. How efficiently our nursing students are trained to take care of these patients in future? The 2011 article “Awareness of Palliative Care Among Diploma Nursing Students” in Indian Journal of Palliative Care set out to answer this very question.

There are several components that form an effective palliative care, not to mention the ones that shape the health care system. The specific elements that the article investigates for this study includes Knowledge and attitude of nursing students, correlation between knowledge and attitude, association between knowledge, attitude and selected demographic variable  (Suja Karkada et al, 2011, p. 20). These four elements are very good choices, as each one plays a critical role in the outcome of a patient’s treatment.

The research process can be conducted through several methods: For this particular study the authors Suja, Baby S and Malathi chooses correlative survey among 83 third year diploma nursing students by using cluster sampling to help answer whether or not students has adequate knowledge and positive attitude towards palliative care.

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The data analyzed showed that the majority (51%) of them was in the age group of 21 years and 92% of the were females. Only 43.4% of them were aware of the term palliative care and it was during their training period. The data showed that 79.5% of students had poor knowledge (6.4±1.64) on palliative care and 92.8% of them had the favorable attitude (56.7±8.5) towards palliative care. The chi-square showed a significant association between knowledge and age (x² =18.52,p<0.01) of the nursing students.

The authors also noted that their study is the first of its kind. The study resulted conclusive, stating that palliative care aspect should be incorporated into the diploma nursing curriculum. By conducting this study hopefully, they inspired other people to ask similar questions and maybe even design better thought out research.

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ARTICLE #2

Title: Nurse–patient communication: an exploration of patients’ experiences

Communication is a very important part of life. It is crucial in situations where a person’s life depends on the transmission of important information. An example of an environment where this type of situation occurs is in the health care field. Communication here is unavoidable, patients tell doctors their symptoms, doctors convey this information to nurses, and nurses further interact with patients to manage their care. How does nurse-patient communication affect the quality care? The 2004 article Nurse–patient communication: an exploration of patients’ experiences in the Journal of Clinical Nursing 13, 41–49 sets out to answer this very question. Nurses are frequently described in the literature as poor communicators, there are several components that form and affect everyday communication, not to mention the ones that shape the health care system. The specific elements that the article investigates for this study includes Patient-centred communication, and positive nurse-patient relationship (Catherine McCabe, 2004, p. 41). These two elements are very good choices, as each one plays a critical role in the outcome of how nurses communicate.

The research process can be conducted through several methods: Though to answer a question the author considered a qualitative perspective using an hermeneutic phenomenological approach to be the most appropriate methodology for this study by using purposeful sampling, eight patients in a general teaching hospital in the Republic of Ireland were interviewed. Data were collected using unstructured interviews. Data analysis was a reflective process and the findings were presented through the description and interpretation of themes and sub-themes.

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The analysis of the finding and the data provided the outcome that there were, ‘lack of communication’, ‘attending’, empathy’ and ‘friendly nurses’. The article was concluded stating that the findings of this study indicate that, in contrast to the literature that suggests that nurses are not good at communicating with patients, nurses can communicate well with patients when they use a patient-centred approach. However, health care organizations do not appear to value or recognize the importance of nurses using a patient-centred approach when communicating with patients to ensure the delivery of quality patient care.