8/18/2019 Frameworks for Research
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Frameworks for Research
Patricia Liehr and Mary Jane Smith
From Practice to Research
To be introduced to frameworks for research, put yourself in the
shoes of Kate andthoughtfully listen to her story by attending to
the message it brings for the practicing nurse
wishing to critique, understand and do research. Kate works in a
coronary care unit (CCU). She
has worked in this unit for nearly three years, since she
graduated with a baccalaureate degree in
nursing. She has grown more comfortable over time and now
believes that she can readily
manage whatever comes her way with the complexities of patient
care in the CCU. Recently, she
has been observing the pattern of blood pressure (BP) change
when healthcare providers enter a
patient’s room. This observation began when Kate noticed that
one of her patients a 62 year oldAfrican-American woman who had
continuous arterial monitoring, had dramatic increases in BP,
as much as 100%, each time the healthcare team made rounds in
the CCU. Furthermore, this
elevated BP persisted after the team left her room and slowly
decreased to reach pre-round levels
within the following hour. Conversely, the same patient, when
visited by the nurse manager on
her usual daily rounds, engaged calmly in conversation and was
often left with lower BP when
the nurse-manager moved on to the next patient. Kate thought
about what was happening and
adjusted her work so that she could closely observe the details
of this phenomenon over several
days.
