Fundamentals of evidence-based Practice-Pearson set Project

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to categorically examine the the ideal of caring from the perspectives of social and health care. The report strives to look at the practice of evidence based practice and its functions in the research and practice of health care. It also seeks to construct a research proposal in which it examines what are the methods it can use in order to improve car practices. The document also wants to look at literature review as being an aid to developing positive outcomes in the area of innovation in health care, categorically looking at how gaps in literature need to be filled in order to improve the current understanding in health care provision in order to effect change in the right direction.

Explain the role of research for evidence-based practice in health and social care.

The Importance of Evidence Based Research

Evidence based health care is considered by many to be the most reliable form of health care which can be adopted by professionals. Despite the approval and popularity that it enjoys, the concept of evidence-based health care is a fairly new concept. It was a term which was first adopted by the American College of Physicians Journal in the year 1991 (Guyatt, 1991). Bhargava and Bhargava (2007) define the concept of evidence-based health care as the completely embodying aspects like the best research in the contemporary academia, the clinical expertise and the singular experiences of the patients who are undergoing the treatment. The following section will examine the role of research in evidence based practice in health care and elucidate on the skills required to conduct such a research. The aspect of clinical expertise is not something that is learnt in a few days or even years, it comes from a long practice of knowing and anticipating the patient needs and in addition to that, having an in-depth and intimate knowledge of the social and cultural settings in which the patient operates. They argue that even though evidence-based research and application is the need of the hour, the issue with the current way this is being approached is that in health care, there are different niches which are in need of separate forms of evidence-based research. For example, evidence-based dentistry needs to be differentiated from evidence-based nursing, however, most frequently, they are clubbed together under healthcare. Additionally, a downside to the phenomenon being a recent one is that there is a dearth of trained professionals who are capable of undertaking research like that.

Qualities Needed to Conduct Evidence Based Research

The following section will look at the skills which are needed to conduct research in the health care area, especially literature review based research. It wants to look at the potential issues that could arise out of a researcher conducting research in evidence-based health care and how one could get over the difficulties through the usage of personal and professional skills. Personal and Professional Skills Needed for Evidence Based Research In the light of this, there is no doubt that the personal skills of the individual who are conducting the research is of the paramount importance. This section will elucidate on the skills which are understood by the author as important in conducting research in evidence based health care. This section will also include a self-examination of the skills that are being discussed and will try to understand the ethics involved in exercising the skill.

Empathy: One of the most important skills that a researcher needs to have in order to become a healthcare researcher is empathy. The researcher needs to be driven from the inside in order to conduct good quality research. The process of undertaking research is not an easy process and it is likely that an individual who is empathetic to the cause of conducting research will more likely put in greater effort. British Journal of General Practice understands empathy as a complex emotion which is morally and cognitively connected to the individual’s mind and it affords the researcher/individual three abilities; firstly to understand the plight of the patient from their perspectives, secondly to successfully make the patient understand that they care for them and understand their position and thirdly, to take practical courses of action in order to successfully aid the patient in their discomfort (bjgp.org). The same values apply for a researcher as well as the researcher needs to keep these values in mind when they are undertaking research. In terms of understanding and empathy, I believe I am interested in studying healthcare for this very reason and I believe I am a naturally empathetic person. Communication Skills: Communication skills are important in not just daily life, but especially in the life of a researcher. Communication skills are important because they not only aid in making the interviewees comfortable, but they also aid in making sure that the data that is being collected is accurate and no misleading data is collected due to gap in communication (editage.com). According to my own examination of myself, I believe I possess good communication skills, both written and oral. However, I believe my oral skills are the best communication skills I have and I believe that when I have to use my oral skills to communicate, I do the best research. Ethical Consideration: A pertinent skill that all researchers must have is an innate sense of ethical considerations, which need to be translated practically into the way they responsibly conduct literature review and in the way in which they generally behave during in the whole. Broadly speaking, research ethics are made up of several aims, which constitute aiming towards providing for the expansion of knowledge in the field, the purpose of research should be unbiased and the researcher should possess the skill of being objective in his or her outlooks towards research. Health research is especially important as it should aim towards bettering the health of a certain group or individuals in general but never about marginalising other groups or individuals in the process (Resnick, 2015). I believe I have an innate sense of morality and a set of principles which I believe in, which I try to bring into my research process. Flexibility: Flexibility is a good quality to possess by the researcher regardless of which are they are researching in, but for a researcher who is working with health, this becomes even more of an important quality. The reason being that working in the health sector means that timings may not be typically 9 to 5, as they are with other professions (carrington.edu). Gibson et al (2005) elucidate that flexibility is an important quality in a researcher as the individual is able to quickly adapt to changing situations and additionally this is a valuable trait for both companies and the individuals themselves as it helps avoid the costs of adjusting. Personally speaking, I think flexibility and adaptability is very important and I believe with my time and skills I am very flexible. However, I do believe that I need to be a little more adaptable with my skills, as I am just learning about research during my educational years and it would be helpful if I am exposed to more research skills to help me hone my adaptability skills. Confidence: At any point in the researcher’s study, the researcher needs to be confident about the outcome of the study and needs to have faith in their own skill set and qualifications. Research has found that concepts like perceived ability and perceived sense of confidence have a deep impact on the individual. Bandura (1986) first spoke about how confidence in oneself can effectively lead to more favourable outcomes for the individual and how it can lead to more successful outcomes. Self confidence is an important quality in a researcher and I believe I have the confidence to carry out any research that I undertake. If not, I believe I have the confidence to pursue the necessary knowledge to acquire the research skills needed.

Conduct a review of key literature relating to a research topic towards improvements in care practice.

Across nations, the funding of healthcare is a responsibility which is shared by individuals and the state authority. While it depends solely on the state government how much they invest in health care, the number differs from nation to nation based on how developed or underdeveloped the nation is. However, a similarly significant area to be considered when someone is thinking about the effect of funding on healthcare is the funding of healthcare in the workplace and the private and non-state aspects of funding healthcare. This section will look at the effects that funding health and social care initiatives have on adults, especially from the perspective of adults who are occupying professional spaces. The idea of public health is rooted strongly in the ideal of developing the health of not just individuals who are directly affiliated to the institution, but also with the ideal of developing he whole community and society. Brown and Boyce (2019) argue that there are some key concerns when it comes to health and one of them is the shrinking employment rates. Additionally, the rise of temporary and non-traditional jobs is leading to gaps in access to financial means through which individuals could access proper health care. In a 2016 report by WHO, the organization highly recommended the investment of resources in the workforce as giving rise to several positive outcomes because between 2000 to 2014, the health and social work sector rose by 48%. Investment in this sector will only see profit as this sector continues to grow while sectors like agriculture and industry decline. It was discovered that each dollar spent in the health care sector results in a 0.77 dollar contribution into the economy of the country. From these results, it is clear that such a result is applicable even if investment in made in the professional setting. Marginal investment in health care not only leads to the loss of such a return, but also ends up costing the institution or state more. The report discovered that inefficient health care caused by a lack of funding and subsequent lack of knowledge costs an annual 500 billion dollars worldwide in treatment which was avoidable. Goddard et al (2015) speak of integrated health care whereby funds are collectively used for the purposes of patient care and wellness. They found in literature that integrated health care initiatives led to several positive outcomes like the reduction of emergency and unplanned hospital admissions, improved access to health care, health care packages which are tailored to suit individual needs and significant improvement in the overall health of the individuals. However, when they did further research on the effect of integrated funding on the overall health of the individual, they discovered that there is no concrete linkage between the improving health of the individual and the usage of integrated funding in the community. This could be because of a variety of reasons; possibly because of the absence of schemes which led to only an increasing usage of hospitals by community members and not any initiative to start a scheme for community medicine or health care programmes. There was only a small minor of schemes which gave desired results in terms of achieving total social and health care of the individuals of the community or social group that they were catering to. However, they conclude by saying that policy makers still need to take integrated financing of health care services, as it still has a lot of potential. One of the main problems that they encountered while they were doing research on data was linking the data on health in the community with the data in social care. This was mainly because social care depends heavily on the cultural differences that differ from place to place, region to region. An important aspect to consider while trying to understand the impact of funding on the overall health of the individual is to consider the case of individual employees in the work place. One of the main methods trough which the health of the individual is ensured in the workplace is through health insurance. A number of factors play an important role in determining the kind of health service that the company provides, which include, but are not limited to, the functioning of the economy, increasing costs of health care, rising costs of goods and services, increasing competition, burgeoning population etc. Smaller firms are usually not as willing to participate in extensive health care plans as their larger counterparts. However, it is significantly more in the interest of the employer to invest in the health of the employees in the beginning because studies have shown that when employers avail work insurance for diseases which could’ve been prevented had there been insurance available to them, to prophylactically treat these diseases, the amount they avail then is significantly more than the amount that the employer would’ve spent on their regular health insurance (Institute of Medicine, 2003). Song and Baicker (2019) delve on the importance of wellness programs in the work place on the health of the employees. Wellness programs in the work place are geared towards improving the general well-being of the individual employee, but more specifically, at preventing health issues and diseases which may later turn problematic. Before this, Goetzel and Ozminkowski (2008) researched on a similar topic, however results have not been as conclusive as they should have been because of the paucity of data and/or a small sample size. Song and Baicker (2019) discovered that while wellness programmes in professional environments did lead to significant improvement in the adoption of healthier habits in the workplace, that did not necessarily lead to healthier outcomes in the clinical sense. However, they discovered that it led to a noticeable change in the overall lifestyle of the individual. This in turn, had the potential to influence the behaviour of the people in the community around those individuals. One thing that research is increasingly concentrating on right now is the innovations that are taking place in the area of health research. It is important to consider that in the light of this, funding needs to concentrate on funding new forms of research which are specifically aimed at influencing policy. Asch et al (2018), researching on the healthcare systems, postulate that the idea that health care bodies will be encouraged when they get paid for each treatment as opposed to them getting paid a certain amount for a certain time period is a problematic notion. They put the issue of funding and grants at the top of the reasons why innovation and health care has not been progressing at the rate it should be progressing in; they reiterate on the importance of doing research on evidence-based health care and the fact that externally funded grants may fall in the trap of taking too long to deliver results and ultimately becoming irrelevant in the very mission that it set out to accomplish. Hence, the factor of funding is also intimately dependent on the time-frame it is following. Review of Literature Review Using SAMTAB The first parameter is source. The report contained a mixture of articles from peer-reviewed journals, like Elsevier (Polgar and Thomas, 2019), Journal of health services research & policy (Goddard et al, 2015), Jama (Song and Baicker, 2019) and so on. Additionally, reports from World Health Organization (WHO) were also used, which is widely regarded to be the gold standard of medical research and innovation, which is used in both academic work and in practice. In terms of appearance, sources like Asch et al (2018) and Song and Baicker (2019) published their findings in notable peer-reviewed journals like Jama. The advantage that works published in such journals affords the article is the fact that since these are peer reviewed, it carries an implied sense of accuracy and reliability. Additionally due to strict policies of such journals, it can also be inferred that these articles were not funded by parties which had an interest in the results, thereby negating the possibility of certain biases creeping in the work. All of the cited resources used quantitative, qualitative or a mixture of the two methods and scientifically analysed the data to arrive at their conclusion. This was done to ensure the replicability and falsifiability of the data. However, it needs to be understood that the socio-cultural environment in which the data was collected and analysed may not always yield the same kind of results because socio-cultural identity is constantly in flux. Most of the research which was cited was recent, dating back to 2011 to 2019. A few relevant examples were cited from 2008 (Goetzel and Ozminkowski) which elucidated on the work place and its effect on health care and why investing in the health care of employees is more profitable than providing compensation for health problems. Also further because the articles cited were mostly within the last decade, in the absence of major structural paradigm-shifts in the field of health care research, access and funding and its effects on adults, the findings apply to contemporary world of ongoing research and health care practices and approaches in the professional environments. Additionally, since this report borrows from literature specific both to developing and the developed world and health care access across nationalities and class lines, this report can claim to have a near universal applicability of the cited literature. Finally, sources like Brown and Boyce (2019) spoke extensively about the research into health care and sources like Bhargava and Bhargava (2007) and Song and Baicker (2019) spoke almost exclusively about the practice of health and wellness programmes in a practical setting like a professional space. Hence, this project believes that it provides an important balance between the perspectives which speak of academic research and further scope into the field and also of sources which speak of ways in which the current approaches to health care practice and social care practice can be successfully applied to real-life personal and professional settings.

Project Proposal Using Evidence Based Research

This particular section will aim to develop a project proposal which will deal with the idea of conducting evidence based research in order to understand what are the hindrances to funding in the adult healthcare funding sector in the contemporary times. Research Question What are the main hindrances to the funding initiatives in professional and non-professional areas in the health care sectors. How does funding positively impact the presence of productive health care policies in the public sector and in the professional space? Literature Review Aveyard (2014) elucidates that for literature review in health care, a strategy needs to be implement which follows the steps of planning and implementing. She reiterates the importance of evidence based research, which enunciates that there needs to be a hierarchy of evidence in terms of making an inclusion and exclusion criteria which will tell the researcher what to and what not to include. Methodology The methodology which was used in this project was open-ended interviewing of health professionals and health care workers in order to understand how health care systems will be impacted by funding. The criterion for understanding which areas require attention in the particular health care sector where the research is being undertaken will be supplemented by literature review, which will focus on finding out the correlation between funding and advancement in health care, and subsequently the effect of funding on adult health care policies. Ethical Considerations Some ethical issues that need to be considered are that the interviewees need to be informed that their information will be used in the research and that their responses are being recorded. The information that is being recorded will not be misused for any reason and will not be taken out of context.

Examine the value of the literature review process in influencing positive change in health and social care practice

It cannot be contested that the importance of research in the health and care field is a absolutely irreplaceable. Research is the very vehicle which moves the science of health care forward. Thomas and Polgar (2019) recognise that the most important aspect of the advancement of health care research is the education and training of individuals who are working in the health care sector. They describe that an important distinction of health research came when positivism came and afterwards when the critiques of positivism were made. Positivism was characterised by empiricism, a kind of research method which relied solely on the individual’s ability to understand through their sensation. A distinctive ideal that positivism promulgated was the ideal of falsification. Essentially, what it meant was that a scientific formula is one which has the chances of being falsified (Polgar and Thomas, 2019). Impact of Recent Research and its Positive Impact on Current Delivery Service Since the advent of technology, the methods and subjects being studied under research has changed drastically. Levitt et al (2009) reveal that while the first forms of research included almost exclusively clinical trials, gradually research in health expanded to gathering information as well. This entails the research into samples and and data which were previously collected for the purposes of some other kind of research, most probably for diagnostic reasons. But now they are being used for a different kind of research which has different objectives in undertaking that research. Thomas and Polgar (2019) recognise that the most important aspect of the advancement of health care research is the education and training of individuals who are working in the health care sector. They describe that an important distinction of health research came when positivism came and afterwards when the critiques of positivism were made. Positivism was characterised by empiricism, a kind of research method which relied solely on the individual’s ability to understand through their sensation. A distinctive ideal that positivism promulgated was the ideal of falsification. Essentially, what it meant was that a scientific formula is one which has the chances of being falsified (Polgar and Thomas, 2019). However, with the decades wearing on, the ideal of positivism came under criticism as well as it became increasingly apparent that all aspects of healthcare research is not going to be encompassed by the positivist methods. Hence, research in healthcare is an important facet which keeps developing in order to change perspectives about health care delivery system and how it can benefit individuals the best way. Evaluation of Own Lessons During The Research Another important perspective I gained in the duration of this study was that health care innovation is the cornerstone to economic development in the society. Only by providing prophylactic health care measures and by making them the foundation on which health care policies are based, in a work place, can corporations and subsequently states, profoundly effect the overall health of the individual. I feel this is, in the long-term, the most viable option for the achieving the dual goals of improving the general health of the population and also reducing the employee health-related costs of the company when the company has to compensate their employees post-some serious health problems which could have been preventable. Through my research, I have tried to contribute to the growing body of literature which examines how funding positively impacts adult healthcare policies and I have tried to critically introspect at my own abilities and achievements during the process. Additionally, I have also learned several valuable things in the duration of this research, and the completion of this project provided an excellent base for me to completely other forms of research about health care and funding which I can engage in later on.

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References

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