Number 1 peer post
The PICOT question I created and relevant in my current nursing practice is-The effectiveness of aroma therapy for the treatment and management of nausea and vomiting in post-operative adult patients. The study will be performed in a span of three to six months.
I find this research question significant and worthy of deeper exploration to help improve the patients’ experience during post-operative recovery. As some patients reported that nausea and vomiting are harder to endure than pain.
Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt (2019), suggested basic and advance searching strategies to practice when conducting a systematic literature review in order to find precise evidences to answer a PICOT question. As a beginner in evidence-based practice research, I will apply the basic strategies and eventually progress to advanced searching competencies. The basic steps that I will follow include: Identifying main topics, terms and phrases. Determining appropriate databases and sources. Creating search strategies. Selecting the applicable articles that matches the PICOT question and obtaining suitable literature.
To follow the basic steps mentioned above to answer my PICOT question, I will use the keywords post-operative nausea and vomiting, and aroma therapy as my key phrases. Additionally, I will utilize the school library to search databases such as CINAHL Complete and PubMed. Exploring different journals that have contents matching my PICOT question will also be helpful.
Per Polit and Beck (2018), several types of assessment questions can be used to critically appraise the evidences gathered. First question, was the study reliable and aggressive? Second, what are the results of the study? Third, was the study precisely performed? Fourth, what are the effects of the evidence, good and bad? Fifth, what is the financial cost of the application of the evidence? Lastly, is the evidence relevant to my practice?
These are some of the processes that I will apply in formulating my research study for my PICOT question.
Number 2 peer post
“In any clinical setting there are numerous sources of information to answer a variety of questions about how to improve patient care or update clinical procedures and protocols” (Melnik & Fineout-Overholt, 2019, p. 55). As I begin to dive into my PICOT question it is imperative that I narrow down the type of research databases and produce a strategy for finding the best fitting research information. My PICOT question is: in chronic pain patients (P), how effective is alternative treatments such as yoga, massage, physical therapy, and guided imagery (I) in comparison to opioids (C) in reducing chronic pain (O) over a 6-month period (T). Finding the correct information for my PICOT question will require more than one resource. Now that I have formulated my PICOT question some recommend starting the search for sources in regards to population and intervention while others recommend starting with the outcome and intervention (Melnik & Fineout-Overholt, 2019 ). I’m torn in regards as to which is best for my topic and will work on deciding what sources to look for first.
Although I will most definitely be using google search to identify resources it will not be the only search engine I use. I plan to utilize the library through US University and use the search engines they provide such as: CINAHL, pubmed, and MEDLINE. The Centers for Disease Control has very valuable information regarding the opioid pandemic and how opioids are affecting our populations and that is information I have been able to find on google. As well as these sources I plan to search for journals showing published evidence of how alternative treatments treat chronic pain and reduce the need of opioids for patients. Key words during my search would include: chronic, pain, and alternative pain treatments. This key word search may change depending on what types of information I find in the search engines.
If these databases I plan to use do not lead me to any substantial amount of good quality information I plan to utilize the librarian and ask if she has any other search databases she could recommend. I really want to exhaust all options during my research so that I have the best possible resources for my PICOT question. On my search for the best evidence, critically appraising each source will be of the upmost importance. One point I would like to implement when appraising evidence is how current it is. I think going back possibly as far as 2010 would be a good timeline and give plenty of current information. Because the opioid pandemic is such a relevant topic right now, going back only 5 years for resources I anticipate will still give me a lot of valuable information. Reading literature reviews prior to sighting resources would also help give me an idea of the quality of the study (Polit & Beck, 2018). “The “truth” is most likely to be discovered when researchers use powerful designs, good sampling plans, high-quality data collection procedures, and appropriate analyses” (Polit & Beck, 2018, p.116).