Clinical Question
The clinical question in the current project proposal is “Is the patient education intervention for elderly patients with chronic diseases able to increase the patients’ health knowledge and improve their health statuses?”
The Proposed Intervention
The intervention will consist of three phases: pre-experimental, experimental, and post-experimental. The participants will be divided into two groups: experimental and control. At the first phase, both groups will be asked about their knowledge of self-care aspects and the acquaintance with their disease. At the second stage, the control group will receive only hospital treatment whereas the experimental group will receive both treatment and education. The educational methods will incorporate the use of lectures and printed materials (Tannenbaum, Martin, Tamblyn, Benedetti, & Ahmed, 2014) and educational films (Hsueh et al., 2014).
At the third stage, I will suggest the participants another survey which will check their updated knowledge of the illness. The experimental group is expected to show a much more profound understanding of the diseases and the nature of healing process than the control group.
Outcomes and Their Analysis
Patient-reported outcomes of the intervention will be analyzed with the help of qualitative instruments. Qualitative measurement will make it possible to evaluate the participants’ motivations and needs. It will also allow assessing the productivity of the proposed intervention. Qualitative measures will give insight to the problem of insufficient education of the elderly patients with chronic diseases.
Data Collection Tools and Statistical Analysis
Data collection method will imply distributing survey sheets to the participants and asking them to fill in the answers. The surveys will be completed by means of paper and pencil questionnaires. To check the efficacy of the intervention, I will arrange pre-testing and post-testing.
In relation to the chosen data collection tools, the statistical analysis performed in the project will consist of three phases: data preparation, descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics (Trochim, 2006). Preparation of data incorporates inspection of data’s veracity, locating it in the computer, and creating a database incorporating the miscellaneous measures. The next phase, descriptive statistics, will allow describing the core elements of the intervention’s data. Descriptive statistics allows making basic summaries about the intervention’s measures and sample. The third phase of statistical analysis, inferential statistics, makes it possible to analyze the project’s hypotheses and questions. By employing this type of statistical analysis, I will be able to make conclusions about the impact of the intervention and see whether it was positive or negative.
Data preparation phase will be the shortest and will focus on the major features of the intervention. Descriptive statistics will be more time-consuming and will result in tables and/or graphs presenting the most crucial outcomes. Inferential statistics will connect the clinical question with the findings of the study.
Demographic Data Reported on the Participants
To obtain a possibility for the best analysis of the proposed intervention, the following demographic data on the patients will be reported: age, sex, and education. Additionally, I shall collect the data concerning the type of disease and its duration.
Expected Outcomes
As a result of the proposed intervention, health literacy of older adults is expected to increase significantly, thus leading to their enhanced health outcomes. In particular, patients with chronic diseases are supposed to obtain a better comprehension of their health peculiarities and learn about the ways to either facilitate or reduce their manifestations. In case if the intervention is not successful, it will be necessary to analyze the mistakes and come up with more productive approaches.
References
Hsueh, F. C., Wang, H. C., Sun, C. A., Tseng, C. C., Han, T. C., Wei, C. Y.,… Yang, T. (2014). The effect of different patient education methods on quality of bowel cleanliness in outpatients receiving colonoscopy examination. Applied Nursing Research, 27(2), 1-5.
Tannenbaum, C., Martin, P., Tamblyn, R., Benedetti, A., & Ahmed, S. (2014). Reduction of inappropriate benzodiazepine prescriptions among older adults through direct patient education: The EMPOWER cluster randomized trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(6), 890-898.
Trochim, W. M. K. (2006). Analysis. Research methods: The essential knowledge base (2nd ed.) Web.