Introduction
Issues of clinical relevance are often not narrowly focused but instead seek to explore a set of practical measures that can make the patient’s experience better. Including one such pressing issue is the prevention of bedsores for inpatients who cannot perform physical activity. It is widely known that bedsores are defined as soft tissue necrosis resulting from impaired nutrition and prolonged pressure on a specific area of the body (Kottner et al., 2018). In other words, as a result of inadequate care, a limited-mobility patient may lie in a hospital bed for long periods, creating the foundation for bedsores to form. As a result, bedsores can lead to localized necrosis of the patient’s external tissues and serious pain effects and even to the potential development of purulent vascular inflammation and sepsis. In this context, the high practical value of care measures preventing the formation of bedsores in the bedridden patient seems obvious. This essay aims to develop a strategic plan for an in-depth study of the clinical problem of bedsores prevention using an evidence-based checklist as a guide for care.
Research Questions
Because the proposed goal is multifaceted and complex, it is appropriate to fragment it into separate subtopics. Specifically, five research questions are proposed to be answered sequentially to create a framed and critical study. The following research questions are the key vectors of the work being developed, but this does not limit the material to clarifying related less significant questions.
- What is the clinical problem of pressure sores, and why is it relevant?
- To what consequences can the lack of preventive measures lead?
- According to the review, what are the classic preventive measures?
- Based on research, what should an evidence-based checklist for preventing bedsores in bedridden patients look like?
- Based on the results of the questionnaire, what conclusions can be reached?
Basic Research Designs
Once the purpose of the study has been fully identified and divided into specific subtopics, it is appropriate to prepare the foundation for future organizational designs for the project. The first thing to do is to decide on a research design that is fully justified by the expected results. To put it another way, since the research product proposed is a formalized checklist of questions and guidelines for effective and quality bedsores prevention in the bedridden patient, it is advisable to focus on a combined systematic review and questionnaire (Melo, 2018). This strategy will allow for secondary data for the checklist and the questionnaire’s preliminary results. Consequently, the combined method will make it possible to create a relevant scientific study with a high practical value.
It should be emphasized that the clinical problem proposed for study within the framework of the present design is not as widely popular among the academic community as the more significant issues of world medicine. Nevertheless, the existing body of scholarly work and public opinion is sufficient to address it for review. In other words, one of the central sections of the research under development is to conduct a narrowly focused systematic keyword review. Using a set of thematic criteria — to be refined later — it is proposed to find a set of relevant studies evaluating measures to prevent bedsores (Patino & Ferreira, 2018). A review will be conducted for these works, highlighting key findings useful for the checklist.
At the same time, an essential section of the entire project is to conduct our survey questionnaire. It is expected that this scientific strategy, as part of the qualitative measurement, will help make the current project more relevant and producing cutting-edge primary results. Recognition of the practical value of such a method dictates the need for the careful design of the questionnaire to be used for the study (Cleave, 2021). At the same time, it is essential to determine a sampling strategy that supports representativeness and eliminates bias and sampling error. Thus, there is a need for additional work to create or find a suitable questionnaire to distribute to respondents later.
The design of the questionnaire should be based on the qualitative nature of the research, in which the results of the answers to the questions asked in the questionnaire are evaluated and interpreted. However, it should be understood that complete randomization is challenging to achieve in an academic project. For this reason, it is proposed to use quasi-experimental models. More specifically, no exposure to bedridden patients is intended in this project, but instead, subjective data should be collected from patients and nurses, reflecting the clinical agenda for bedsores prevention. Such a decision would allow a deeper assessment of the significance of the problem and modification of the checklist according to the trends identified, not in isolation from practice.
Questions Used
Since the research project has two key vectors that should lead to an overall result — namely, a systematic review and a survey method — it is advisable to take care of the sound quality of their execution. Scenarios in which the data collected turn out to be framed but not objective or not consistent with reality should be ruled out (Yadegarzadeh & Fatemi, 2018). Thus, it is important to do additional work in selecting criteria for the inclusion of scientific sources. This includes the rules of relevance and age of papers, the language of writing, the nature of research limitations, and authors’ authority. Creating correct and unambiguous questions and qualitative data processing methods should be explored separately to form the questionnaire.
Analytical Methods
A competent combination of a systematic review and questionnaire methods will achieve the desired research effectiveness. In addition, it will help to realize high academic standards of learning. At the same time, such a strategy helps summarize the author’s critical skills in the role of researcher. For this reason, a preliminary discussion of analytical methods is critical, as it will allow early identification of the main vectors of the future project. More specifically, it is necessary to describe the analytical collection tools and information processing methods used in the context of appropriate decubitus prevention.
Scientific sources should be collected through the use of digital libraries. These can be any platforms that provide access to full-length versions of studies: PubMed, Google Scholar, Elsevier. In addition, it should be noted that since the research project is expected to be up-to-date, it is important to take care of the age of the work: most likely, the primary inclusion criterion will be set such that the source was published no earlier than 2015. It is expected that the primary body of work collected will be very large, but once the secondary selection criteria are used — to be refined later — the number of actually relevant sources will be reduced. A systematic review should be conducted by a careful reading of the collected sources and highlighting those facts that will be useful for the project’s results. For this reason, a good strategy would be to conduct an annotated bibliography beforehand, which will save time later and allow for more efficient references to the works.
On the other hand, it is equally important to discuss analytical tools for the survey. In the context of socially restrictive measures, the format of the questionnaire should be virtual. For this reason, the method of recruiting participants should be determined in advance: most likely, it should be a community of patients who have been lying and have been lying in a hospital room for a long time. In addition, nurses should be interviewed separately to determine their opinions on effective care, key issues, and personal recommendations for preventing bedsores. The results collected should be interpreted statistically using percentage counts, cross-tabulations, and trends (Stavseth et al., 2019). It is important to use statistics competently in this matter so that conclusions are correct.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the problem of proper prevention of bedsores plays an essential role in the clinical environment. Effective, quality care for bedridden patients helps prevent the development of necrosis (Alhammadi & Ogale, 2020). For this reason, this design developed key scientific research strategies to develop an evidence-based checklist on correct prevention. It was suggested that the project methodology be divided into creating a systematic review and a survey. This would effectively process secondary data and achieve relevance at the expense of primary data. In addition, the need for additional work to create an annotated bibliography and study the rules of competent questioning of participants was clarified.
References
Alhammadi, H. M. A., & Ogale, R. J. (2020). Effectiveness of Home Caregivers Teaching Program on Prevention of Decubitus Ulcer in Bed Ridden Elderly Patients. International Journal of Nursing, 7(2), 69-79.
Cleave, P. (2021). Advantages of questionnaires in online research. SmartSurvey.
Kottner, J., Black, J., Call, E., Gefen, A., & Santamaria, N. (2018). Microclimate: a critical review in the context of pressure ulcer prevention. Clinical Biomechanics, 59, 62-70.
Melo, S. (2018). How to use checklists to improve efficiency? Data Scope.
Patino, C. M., & Ferreira, J. C. (2018). Inclusion and exclusion criteria in research studies: definitions and why they matter. Jornal Brasileiro de Pneumologia, 44, 84-84.
Stavseth, M. R., Clausen, T., & Røislien, J. (2019). How handling missing data may impact conclusions: A comparison of six different imputation methods for categorical questionnaire data. SAGE Open Medicine, 7, 1-12.
Yadegarzadeh, G., & Fatemi, A. (2018). Evaluation of Educational Scientific Articles with the Purpose of Identification Common Statistical Errors. Journal of Instruction and Evaluation, 11(41), 135-154.