Critical Appraisal Essay For Annual Review Of Public Health.

Write about the Critical Appraisal for Annual Review of Public Health.

Nursing is a challenging and dynamic discipline that requires a practitioner to be knowledgeable and all-round. A competent nurse should possess a wide range of attributes such as effective interpersonal communication, intercultural understanding, decision-making, educational, and problem-solving skills. That is the only way through which a nurse can deliver quality healthcare services to the satisfaction of the patients. However, to acquire, develop, nurture, and refine such skills, a nurse should be ready to embrace the culture of Evidence-Based Practice because it emphasizes on the need of integrating personal knowledge with external clinical evidence from scientific research. The purpose of this paper is to present a critical analysis of the concept of Evidence-Based Practice in reference to published literature.   

"Exploring Resilience and Mindfulness as Preventative Factors for Psychological Distress Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress among Human Service Professionals"

I would like to begin this task by conducting a critical appraisal of "Exploring Resilience and Mindfulness as Preventative Factors for Psychological Distress Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress among Human Service Professionals." This is an article that was authored by Frances Klaassen, Harker, Rachel, Steven King, and Aileen M. Pidgeon.  The authors use this article to provide a comprehensive analysis of the correlation between the concepts of Secondary Traumatic Stress, psychological burn out, and distress on one hand and resilience and mindfulness on the other hand. In accordance to their findings, the researchers establish that psychological burn out, distress and Secondary Traumatic Stress are common challenges faced by the people who work in the human service sector (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen & King, 2016). However, the research revealed that these conditions can be addressed if appropriate measures are taken to apply the concepts of mindfulness and resilience.

I would like to say, without fear of contradiction that this is an invaluable publication. It presents useful information that can be relied upon to understand the significance of resilience and mindfulness in dealing with the problem of psychological burnout and distress amongst the workers (Bowling, 2014). The article is good it was written by a team of professionals who are credible and have a sound knowledge of the subject matter addressed in the paper. Whereas Harker is attached to the Bond University’s Department of Psychology, both Pidgeon and Klaasen have been serving at the Brisbane-based Mercy Family Services. This is clear proof that the book was written by credible writers who not only work in this field, but have authored many other authoritative publications used today. Hence, there was no conflict of interest in any of them because they were researching and writing on a topic that they know best.

Authorship

The authors demonstrated their professional and writing prowess by publishing an article that had suitable research question and aims to be addressed. The main research question that was to be responded to was to find out the roles of resilience and mindfulness in addressing the problem of psychological burnout and stress amongst the service workers (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen & King, 2016). This was, of course, a good question because it provided a clear roadmap on exactly what the study would be about. It was a good objective because it would be easily achieved. The researchers would not find it hard to accomplish it because it is specific, measurable, since it was smart and achievable.

The research also involved the use of an appropriate design. In order to collect and analyze the data, the researchers decided to use a qualitative research design. This was a right decision because the use of interviews would enable the researchers to collect enough data that would be used to respond to the research questions in a right manner (Schneider, Z., & Whitehead, 2013).

In their methodology, the researchers made a good choice because it was aligned to the question and objectives. The use of survey method was commendable because it enabled the researchers to collect valid and reliable data from the professionals who have been working in the service areas like psychology, counseling, social work, and foster care. The proper way in which the data collection and analysis instruments were used made it possible to generate the data that was used as findings of the study (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2017). That is how the researchers came to a conclusion that resilience and mindfulness actually play a significant role in reducing psychological distress and burnout.

Nonetheless, the only weakness I would like to point out is the use of a small sample size. The inclusion of only 133 participants would compromise the researchers’ efforts to generalize their findings and make it applicable to other settings (Fowler Jr, 2013). That is the only area that, according to my suggestion, the researchers ought to have improved. The number was too small to represent the opinion of the people who work in the social work, counseling, psychology, counseling, youth and foster care fields. At the same time, any biasness in the survey might have interfered with the validity and reliability of the results.

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) is a healthcare approach which advocates for the use of individual knowledge in conjunction with scientific evidence generated from research. Since its introduction in 1992, EBP has been gaining popularity because many practitioners and healthcare organizations support it (Greenhalgh, Howick & Maskrey, 2014). The main reason for this is that EBP can play a significant role in improving the quality of healthcare services provided to the public because it is based on the best research (Brown, 2013). However, despite its role in modern healthcare, EBP has not been effectively implemented thanks to the individual and organizational barriers it encounters.  

Research Question

The individual barriers that hinder the implementation of EBP include age, levels of education, inability to use the internet, inaccessibility to library services, language barriers, and lack of enough time to conduct research. Each of these factors does hinder individual practitioners from engaging in EBP. For example, age might be an impediment because the elderly or ageing workers tend not to embrace modern technologies than their younger and progressive counterparts (Scurlock-Evans, Upton & Upton, 2014). Education also acts as a barrier because the less educated an employee is, the lower the chances of embracing the culture of research and reading. Access to the library services and internet also might make people to refrain from research because they cannot b not get the literature that they require. Lastly, some employees fail to engage in research because they do not have enough time to use for it. Maybe, this might be due to laziness or heavy workload. Therefore, to ensure a full implementation of EBP, all these individual barriers must be addressed.

The implementation of EBP is also derailed by some organizational barriers. Organizational barrier simply refers to the challenges that are faced at the organizational, not personal levels because they are beyond individual employees. The organizational barriers that interfere with the implementation of EBP, therefore, include overloading of the employees, unavailability of rich library services at the workplace, and lack of internet accessibility at the workplace (Aarons, Ehrhart, Farahnak & Sklar, 2014). Each of these practices can make it quite difficult for the workers to embrace EBP. For instance, when the employees have a heavy workload, it means that they cannot get time to use for research. at the same time, if the employer has not availed essential services like internet, computers or library to its staff, the employees cannot do practice EBP whatsoever because it is not practically possible in such an environment (Gray, Joy, Plath & Webb, 2013).

Conclusion

This appraisal was quite insightful because it equipped me with valuable information that I need. "Exploring Resilience and Mindfulness as Preventative Factors for Psychological Distress Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress among Human Service Professionals" is an example of a rich literature that the practitioner should apply when discharging their duties. All the information on EBP is useful too. It explains what EBP is, why it is necessary for the 21^st century medic and the barriers that prevent it from a full implementation. The individual and organizational barriers like inadequacy of essential resources, time limitations, poor training, and lack of adaptability to modern trends in healthcare should be appropriately addressed to ensure that the culture of EBP is inculcated on all the healthcare providers.

References

Aarons, G. A., Ehrhart, M. G., Farahnak, L. R., & Sklar, M. (2014). Aligning leadership across systems and organizations to develop a strategic climate for evidence-based practice implementation. Annual Review of Public Health, 35.

Bowling, A. (2014). Research methods in health: investigating health and health services.

London: McGraw-Hill Education (UK).

Brown, S. J. (2013). Evidence-based nursing: The research-practice connection. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Fowler Jr, F. J. (2013). Survey research methods. New York: Sage publications.

Gray, M., Joy, E., Plath, D., & Webb, S. A. (2013). Implementing evidence-based practice: A review of the empirical research literature. Research on Social Work Practice, 23(2),157-166.

Greenhalgh, T., Howick, J., & Maskrey, N. (2014). Evidence based medicine: a movement in crisis?. Bmj, 348, g3725.

Harker, R., Pidgeon, A. M., Klaassen, F., & King, S. (2016). Exploring resilience and mindfulness as preventative factors for psychological distress burnout and secondary traumatic stress among human service professionals. Work, 54(3), 631-637.

LoBiondo-Wood, G., & Haber, J. (2017). Nursing Research-E-Book: Methods and Critical Appraisal for Evidence-Based Practice. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Schneider, Z., & Whitehead, D. (2013). Nursing and midwifery research: methods and appraisal for evidence-based practice. Melbourne: Elsevier Australia. Scurlock-Evans, L., Upton, P., & Upton, D. (2014). Evidence-based practice in physiotherapy: a systematic review of barriers, enablers and interventions. Physiotherapy, 100(3), 208-219.