Introduction
Transition is an important element of patient care, and suboptimal transition may have highly adverse consequences for the patient, such as serious complications that could have been prevented and hospital readmission (Toles, Colón-Emeric, Naylor, Barroso, & Anderson, 2016; Verhaegh et al., 2014). The current paper describes the third phase of the research project aimed at studying the issues with the patient transition in hospitals. Step-by-step instructions for carrying out the project are described, its time frame and budget are discussed, and additional resources required for it are listed.
Implementing the Research Project
To conduct the proposed project, the first step will be to develop questionnaires for gathering data from respondents of the study (Storm, Schulz, & Aase, 2018). Questionnaires consisting of open-ended questions will be created. This will allow for carrying out semi-structured interviews with the participants, permitting them to express their opinions while at the same time keeping them focused on the problems relevant to the study. The questionnaires will also have to include some demographic questions (current position, institutional affiliation, number of years of working as a nurse, age, gender, etc.). It is paramount to formulate questions in the manner that will permit for conducting live interviews with the respondents while at the same time enabling the participants who will answer the questionnaire via the Internet to also provide a brief open written response. This will allow for ensuring that both the participants interviewed personally and those completing the online survey will provide the researcher with information on the same issues relevant to the study.
The second step in the proposed project will be recruiting participants and interviewing them. As has been stated in Phase 2 of this project, the non-randomized stratified sampling technique will be employed. The population for the current study will be comprised of medical personnel, namely, nurses who are involved in issues about the patient transition. There will be two types of respondents: those interviewed personally and those surveyed using the Internet.
To recruit participants for personal interviews, it will be possible to select several local hospitals and to ask their leadership to help distribute the information about the study to the nurses working in their hospital to invite these nurses to be interviewed. The researcher will ask the leadership to participate in some type of staff meetings to briefly inform the nurses about the study and to invite them to participate. The nurses will be given flyers providing information about the research and will be asked to give the researcher their contact information. They will be contacted within several days and asked to participate in the study. The interviews will last for nearly 30 minutes and will be conducted in a previously reserved separate room. Before starting the interviews, the informed consent of the participants will be obtained, in both a written and an oral form. The interviews will be audio-recorded, but the personal details of the respondents will not be revealed. It will be needed to interview 20-25 nurses for this study, or fewer nurses if data saturation is achieved before 20-25 respondents are interviewed.
As for the participants recruited via the Internet, it will be needed to select an appropriate service that can be used for completing surveys and to post the questionnaire there. After that, letters containing a link to that questionnaire will be sent to the leadership of several hospitals in the state. The letters will ask the leaders to forward the information about the survey to nurses working in their hospitals and ask these nurses to complete them.
The third step will include the analysis of the data and making conclusions. The recorded interviews will be transcribed and subjected to coding. The coding procedure will allow for developing themes to identify the main types of problems related to patient transition; the concrete problems will then be classified into these themes. Similarly, the answers gained via the online survey will be coded, and the concrete problems will be classified into the developed themes. A comparison of the results gained from the two types of data will be made, and conclusions about the issue in question will be drawn.
The fourth step includes producing a written report of the study that will have been undertaken. The report will have to include the necessary information about all the key steps of the procedure. More specifically, it will have to contain a literature review, the description of the methodology, the data collection and data analysis procedures, the results of the study, and a discussion of its findings (Storm et al., 2018; Toles et al., 2016).
Time Frame of the Project
Carrying out the proposed project will require a considerable amount of time if all the steps that were described above are to be carried out appropriately. A possible time frame for this project is described in Table 1 below.
Table 1. A Possible Timeline of the Proposed Project.
It is easy to see from Table 1 above that the proposed project may take approximately 7-9 months on the whole.
Budget
Generally speaking, the proposed project will not require significant monetary spending. Nevertheless, the researcher may have to pay for using an online platform on which the questionnaires will be provided for those wishing to complete them in the electronic form. It is possible that using such a platform will cost up to $50-100. Besides, the researcher will probably have to get help in transcribing the recordings of the interviews. It is possible to hire external agencies to do this job, at least partially. Given that the interviews will last for approximately 30 minutes each, that it is expected that 20-25 interviews will be conducted and that transcribing audio recordings may cost $0.50/minute (Yatish, 2015), this may cost nearly $300-375 (this approximate figure can be rounded up to $400). Therefore, the direct spending for the proposed project may sum up to $450-500.
Resources and Statistical Tools Required
As has been noted above, it will be required to develop questionnaires. For this purpose, it will be needed to research the current literature to find out what the nurses should be asked about. Therefore, access to additional scholarly sources will be needed. Also, it will be necessary to pay for the online platform for the questionnaires, which was discussed above. The researcher will also have to use audio recording equipment and computers. However, no statistical tools will be required, for the proposed study is a qualitative one, and does not involve statistical analysis.
Conclusion
All in all, to carry out the proposed project, it will be needed to develop questionnaires, recruit respondents and interview or survey them, analyze the data and draw the conclusions, and produce a written report of the study. The project may take nearly 7-9 months, and direct costs may amount to $450-500. Some additional resources will be required, but no statistical tools will be necessary.
References
Storm, M., Schulz, J., & Aase, K. (2018). Patient safety in transitional care of the elderly: Effects of a quasi-experimental interorganisational educational intervention. BMJ Open, 8(1), e017852.
Toles, M., Colón-Emeric, C., Naylor, M. D., Barroso, J., & Anderson, R. A. (2016). Transitional care in skilled nursing facilities: A multiple case study. BMC Health Services Research, 16(1), 186-199.
Verhaegh, K. J., MacNeil-Vroomen, J. L., Eslami, S., Geerlings, S. E., de Rooij, S. E., & Buurman, B. M. (2014). Transitional care interventions prevent hospital readmissions for adults with chronic illnesses. Health Affairs, 33(9), 1531-1539.
Yatish, Y. (2015). Cost for transcription services.