Critically Evaluating Ethical, Political, Legal, And Social Issues In Developing An Essay Proposal.

1. Critically evaluate the ethical, political, legal and social issues that need to be considered when developing a research proposal.

2. Construct a research question or hypothesis and evaluate its relevance to their field of academic study or area of professional practice.

3. Select and critically appraise appropriate methodology, design and methods to address the specified research question or hypothesis.

Background of the Study

In the current time period, there have been various kinds of health related problems and therefore various kinds of treatments and nursing facilities have developed all over the world. Van Damme et al. (2016) explained that some of the counties have been facing the problem of aging as it is seen that the percentage of old age has been increasing. This has led to the rise in a significant issue and the issue has been taking care of the old aged persons and taking into consideration with the help of which their health and illness can be improved.

The need for service improvement is a key factor in the current time period as it is seen that with the advent of new and improved technologies and the rise in the level of competition in the market as well as in the economy, the tastes and the preferences of the consumers have even changed. In the same way, service improvement is one of the key factors that have to be taken into consideration by the management of the service related companies with the help of which they are able to enhance their service quality, satisfy their customers and thereafter maintain competitive edge in the market (Bainbridge, Bryant and Seow 2017).

In the current time period, one of the significant service industries that have developed has been residential home care. It is mostly seen that most of the middle aged individuals are working and therefore do not get time to take care of their old ones. It is due to this fact that they prefer to keep their old ones in old age homes. However, a new concept has been developed and this includes the residential care homes in which all the activities that are available in the residential home are given to the people dwelling in it and even provides all day nursing and caring services as well. There are numerous issues that are existent in the proper functioning of the residential care homes and it is seen that one of the issues that is existent has been poor documentation among the care assistants in the residential care homes (Hogden et al. 2018). It is seen that in the current time period, most of the individuals who are over the age of 60 years prefer to move into the residential care home as they do not need to depend on others and thereafter they would receive all the services and attention they desire. It is essential to document all the information with respect to the operational activities that is taking place on a daily basis so that proper recording as well as the enhancement of the services can be maintained. The residential care home provides meal services as well as nursing services and 24 hour services and observations are given to their inhabitants. However, in recent times there has been observations that improvements in this industry is even required with the help of which better services can be given so that the extent of satisfaction can be improved. The rise in the level of competition leads to the development of better services and therefore this topic becomes essential with the help of which the developmental activities in the residential care home in UK can be understood.

Problem Statement

In United Kingdom, the extent of old age people have increased and accordingly the residential home care industry in the country has increased as well. One of the most significant factors that have led to the development of this sector has been due to the fact that there has been a rise old age population and the frequency of the working individuals have increased as well (Dawson et al. 2015). The development of the residential home care operations have led to the development of the standard of living of the citizens of the country.

However, in the current time period, there have been developments of certain issues that have led to issues and challenges in this industry. It is essential for the management to maintain record and report of all the patients who are staying in the residential home care so that all information about them can be known. The health problems that are related to them and any kind of issues they have faced previously needs to be noted down so that in can be looked upon the near future. The availability of bad documentation and recording is one such area that needs to be assessed by the management and therefore better policies and strategies need to be maintained with the help of which these areas can be improved. One of the key issues that have been recognised, which has an impact on the quality of the services has been poor level of documentation that is done by the care assistants in the residential care homes. Reporting and documentation is an essential factor and therefore ineffective documenting has an impact on the service quality of the residential care homes. It is seen that residential care homes are concerned with taking care of old people and therefore maintaining their records becomes an essential element. Care assistants have been the one who provide the services to the patients and are taking care of the patients. In the current time period, the performance of the residential care homes have lowered and therefore this has an impact on their profit as well. Ineffective documentation has been one of the problems that have been identified and therefore analysis on this aspect has been taken into consideration. The various factors that lead to poor documentation and all these aspects would be discussed in order to understand the main issues and accordingly recommendations can be constructed with the help of which these issues can be mitigated. 

Purpose of the Study

Cross, Hindley and Carey (2017) highlighted that record keeping has been one such aspect with the help of which service improvement can be done. Hence, assessment of service improvement plans and policies would be taken into consideration with the help of which better operational activities can be created and thereby residential care home services would be enhanced and thereby increase in the satisfaction level of the patients would be increased.

The statement of the problem has been the key factors that have motivated the researcher to undertake a research on this topic.  Residential care homes is a developing industry and evaluation of their activities have explained the fact poor level of documentation has been one of the key issues (Senior et al. 2014). Poor level of documentation has an impact on the activities of the residential care homes as this affects the operational activities of the industry. The care assistants are responsible documenting all the data and their in competencies is the factor that affects the performance of the work as well. Documentation is necessary so that all the data of the patients are maintained with the help of which they can be treated properly. Care assistants work according to their shift hours and therefore proper documentation would assist the other care assistant who is coming in the next shift hour to understand the treatment that is to be delivered to the patients (Grealish et al. 2015). The unavailability of proper reporting even hampers the administration process as the managers as well as the supervisors are unable to understand the activities that have been performed and the ones that need to be performed. The assessment of the issue will be helpful in creating new ideas and recommendations with the help of which documentation can be enhanced and the performance of the companies can be maintained as well. 

The main intention of the research has been to have an understanding of the reporting and documentation services that are offered by the residential care homes in UK. This industry holds very much significance in the current economy as they are looking after the aged and sick people of the country and maintenance and documenting of the data of the inhabitant becomes vital (Bobillier Chaumon et al. 2014). There are certain issues and challenges that are faced by the management of these residential care homes in accordance to the process of recording and documentation of the data and therefore they are in need of improvement of their services. It is due to this fact that this research is conducted in order to have an idea about the issues that are pertinent to this industry and thereafter undertake service improvement plans in order to mitigate the same.

Critically Evaluating Ethical, Political, Legal, and Social Issues in Developing a Research Proposal

The aims and objectives of the research determines the components and the elements that needs to be taken into consideration with the help of which better results in accordance to the service improvement in the residential care home in UK can be attained. The aims and objectives have been stated as follows:

• Determine the main issues related to the documentation process by the care assistants in the residential home care in UK
• Ascertain the ways in which documenting and reporting process in the residential home care can be improved

This section constitutes of examining the several literatures and journal articles that are associated to similar topics to this research in order to create an understanding with the help of which service improvement actions and plans would be understood and thereafter better plans and policies would be created that would be helpful in the development of the documentation activities of the residential care homes and thereby maintain proper records and data (Van Ginneken 2015). The literature would therefore discuss on the several elements and aspects that have been put forth in relation to this aspect addressed by other researchers earlier so that a clear knowledge would be understood and a better research plan for the current paper can be undertaken.

Residential Care Home and Care Assistants   

Residential care homes has been an industry that is developing mainly due to the fact that aging population has been increasing and the absence of people taking care of their sick parents has raised the demand for residential care homes. These homes provide all the services that are demanded by the patients and therefore are competent in catering all the needs of the patients and maintain competitive edge. The care homes have care assistants who are accountable to provide these services to the patients. They have various roles to play and one of them has been reporting and documenting all the data and reports about the patients. The management of the residential care homes have the responsibility of allocating all the tasks to the care assistants and the care assistants need to execute them in order to maintain operational efficiency. Anttonen and Karsio (2016) explained that the perceptions of the care assistants are an effective indicator of the care quality. The significance of the social care measures and for the homeliness characterizes the segmentation among social and health care provisions in care homes. The other factors that have an impact on the satisfaction level of the residents with respect to care have been the extent of staffing, family involvement experience of the meals and meal time, recreational activities and environment and personal control.

Jones et al. (2015), explained that poor documentation has an impact on the performance of the residential care homes. It is seen that there are several factors that lead to poor documentation. The unavailability of effective and proper technologies in accordance to documentation is one of the factors that leads to ineffective documentation. Whittaker et al. (2016) explained that care assistants are unable to report and document all the information simply due to the fact that they do not receive proper training about the reporting process and therefore this has an impact as well. There has been an observation that communication among the care assistants who are working in different shifts hours has been another issue. It is seen that lack of communication creates documentation issue as therefore the assistant who is coming in the next shift is unable to provide the service that is desired. These are the main issues and analysis on these parts would be taken into consideration in order to attain the result with the help of which these issues can be resolved and better documenting can be attained.    

There have been various areas and departments that have been discussed but there are certain areas that require extensive level of improvement as well. Stergiopoulos et al. (2015) explained that the employees and the staffs in the residential care home are well accustomed to taking care of the patients and therefore the patient centred care is an effective one. However, proper training to the employees and the staffs are not provided in accordance to the maintenance of records and hence bad documenting is done. It is mainly seen among the employees who are working in the night shifts simply due to the fact that at this point of time focus is given towards the care of the patients and not towards the recording of the activities that are taking place at night in relation to the patients (Sulimani-Aidan, Sivan and Davidson-Arad 2017). If this information is not recorded then it would lead to ineffective documentation and a patient history would not be recorded in an effective manner. If the documentation is not done appropriately, then this would lead to a bad practice and the breakage of the policies. Bartfay, Bartfay and Gorey (2016) explained that one of the factors that have led to the development of these issues have been ineffective training towards the electronic and other computer related software. The staffs and the employees are not given adequate IT training and therefore they are in certain cases unable to record the information in the computers and this leads to the loss of information. The employees in certain instances may have recorded manually but these pages may get lost and thereby the entire information about the patient may get hampered (Kwong, Hung and Woo 2016). It is therefore important that better awareness programs in relation to the recording of the information should be done so that the staffs and the employees have an idea about the significance of recording and thereby increase their focus on doing the same.

The assessment of the issues related to poor documenting provides insight with the help of which these factors can be resolved. It can be therefore recommended that use of voice recorders should be done with the help of which all the information that are deemed important can be recorded so that it can be used at a later time period. These recordings can be used by the other care assistants and thereby the services that is required by a patient.

It is even recommended that SOAP notes are prepared by the care assistants so that the subjective, objective, assessments and plans can be maintained with the help of which recording of the all the information can be done.

It is even recommended that various technologies must be used with the help of which the the information that is recorded with the help of the voice recorders can be converted into word file and this information can be used in the future as well.

It is even recommended that care quality commission can be created who would have the responsibility of controlling and managing the care assistants with the help of which documenting process can become much more effective.

It is even recommended that training should be given to the care assistants with respect to the documentation of the information so that all the data are available whenever required. This would even be helpful in the developing the extent of communication among the care assistants with the help of which the performance and recording activities can be improved.         

The questions that are constructed in this section would be the ones that would be answered in order to gain access the actual outcome of the research. The research questions have been given as follows:

Q1. How can report writing and documentation between care assistants be enhanced to become more effective and efficient?

The research hypothesis is looking forward to the creation of the subject and the elements that need to be answered with the help of the data analysis process with the help of which the actual result of the research can be ascertained. The hypothesis for this research is:

H₀: The development of the documentation process by the care assistants in the residential care homes is helpful in improving the operational activities

H₁: The development of the documentation process by the care assistants in the residential care homes is not helpful in improving the operational activities

The methodology of the research would explain the sort of data that would be used for the purpose of evaluation of the data and the aspects and the elements with the help of which outcome in relation to the topic can be ascertained. The assumptions that have been taken in order to collect the data has been that all the data that would be collected is true and the precise resources have been used in order to collect the same (Winters et al. 2014). It is imperative to understand the fact that residential care home like the other industries face issues and problems as well and therefore the data would be collected from the source that make use of the services given by the residential care homes.

There are two kinds of approaches that are available for selection for this topic and the two approaches are inductive and deductive approach. In accordance to this topic, deductive approach has been chosen as models and theories that have already been used earlier in certain previous researches have been selected for this topic and no new innovative theories have been constructed (Golant 2014).

This research would be on the basis of qualitative research mainly because of the fact that secondary data would be taken into consideration and accordingly websites and journals would be gathered and collected with the help of which better results in accordance to this topic can be ascertained.

In this research participant sampling would be taken into consideration mainly due to the fact that interview from the nurses would be considered with the help of which service improvement plans and actions would be taken into consideration. One of the main aspects that require improvement in the line of residential home care for the care assistants has been proper recording and documentation of all the reports and data in order to preserve all the information that can be looked upon at future use (Sims-Gould et al. 2017).

The setting of the study would be done by taking assistance of the residential home cares in UK and therefore the care assistants as well as the articles and the journals that have been published based on them would be taken into consideration with the help of which better and effective results can be ascertained (Heflinger et al. 2015). 

The design that would be selected would look to determine the ideology and the guideline that would be followed in order to collect the data and thereby proceed with the assessment of the data (Melão and Guia 2015). It is due to this fact that explanatory research design would be selected as the cause and effect relationship among the variables would be considered with the help of which the desired outcome in relation to this topic can be attained.

The method of undertaking research based on the topic is one of the key aspects that is helpful in the determination of effective results. It is seen that as poor documentation of the residential home care has been taken into consideration, mostly secondary data would be collected due to the fact that secondary data would provide what services are generally offered by the residential home cares and what are the areas and the services that can be improved in order to enhance the result of the paper (Ausserhofer et al. 2016). It is due to this fact that various internet websites would be searched in order to have an idea about the services they offer and several journals published by various other researchers would be assessed so that proper and effective information from the same could be utilised. This is helpful in understanding the services and the activities that could be incorporated in order to enhance the activity level of the residential home cares in UK.

In order to create a better understanding of the topic interview would even be done of the care assistants who are working in the residential home cares and questions would be asked to them in order to have an idea about the aspects and the areas in relation to recording and documenting which they feel would be used enhanced with the help of which service improvement is possible (Grabowski et al. 2015).  The eligibility criteria of the selected journals and articles will be the articles that have been published on or after the year 2014.            

This research is associated to the understanding of the service improvement plans of residential care homes in UK and therefore responses from the ones who are making use of these services would be taken into consideration. Qualitative data would be used and hence secondary data would be collected from various sources and even interviews would be taken from the nurses with the help of which their opinions and feedback can be collected in order to reach the desired outcome in relation to this topic (Meagher, Szebehely and Mears 2016).

The process with the help of which data would be collected has a significant role to play. It is due to this fact that in accordance to this topic, data would be mainly extracted from the secondary sources and therefore internet websites as well as journals and articles that can either be manual or electronic would be taken into consideration with the help of which results can be ascertained. The data that would be collected from the care assistants would be extracted with the help of interview and therefore interview questions will be constructed and accordingly face to face and telephonic interviews of the selected nurses would be done in order to gain the data that would be used for the purpose of data analysis (Davison et al. 2017).

Ethics is one of the elements that needs to be maintained in order to provide evidence that the research that is being undertaken is true and fair. It is due to this fact that the code of conducts laid down by various national and international bodies have been considered and therefore all the data that is to be collected for this research would be collected from authentic sources and no false and misleading data would be used so that the outcome that would be ascertained will be true and fair and would be ideal for reference and future use (O'Dwyer 2015).

The data that would be used will be reliable and valid as the data is collected directly from the ones who are making use of these services (Estabrooks et al. 2015). This justifies the fact that all the information that would be collected would be true as they would look to express their own feelings in accordance to the services.

The data that would be collected would be evaluated with the help of various statistical tools. The tool that would be used is in the discretion of the researcher and along with the topic that has been selected (Ryan, Hislop and Ziebland 2017). In accordance to this research, Excel software would be used with the help of which the collected data would be inserted in the Excel sheet and then converted into numerical with the help of which desired result for the research would be achievable.

The outcome of the study would be disseminated to the external as well as the internal parties as it would be helpful in maximising the reach towards the audience. The internal parties would be inclusive of the care assistants and the employees with whom the research would be undertaken. The feedback from the nurses and the employees would play a vital role as it would determine the feeling value of the respondents and thereby the respondent cycle is completed (Dwyer et al. 2017). The synopsis of the result is even available for the internal publications that would be needed by the trust.

The external parties would be reached with the help of public disclosures and poster presentations. The external parties would have better idea about the overall plan with the help of which their satisfaction level would be met.

Task	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7	Week 8	Week 9
Selection of topic and search for justification
Constructing literature
Selecting appropriate methods
Data collection
Data analysis and representation
Reviewing the outcomes
Conclusions and recommendations
Submitting draft of the project
Printing and final submission

                                    

Particular	Cost
Travel	£ 35
Stationery	£12
Postage	£3
Photocopying	£5
Transcribing	£5
Typing	£10
ATP machine	£ 2500
Participation Information Sheet	£ 1

Conclusion

The overall proposal has therefore looked to explain the documentation aspect that would be helpful in improving the service activities in the residential home cares in UK. The introduction and the background of the study has looked forward to provide an insight over the operational activities that are provided by the residential home cares. The background of the paper provides relevant and precise aspects in relation to the topic with the help of which better understanding of the result can be ascertained. The literature review has provided an insight on the aspects and the areas that require attention in relation to the documentation aspect in the residential home care services so that clear understanding can be attained with the help of which better results can be identified. The aim and the objective of the paper along with the research question and hypothesis provides in relation to which the analysis process would take place. The methodology as well as the designs and the data collection process has been addressed so that the probable outcome of the paper can be ascertained by undertaking the data analysis process. In this manner, all these aspects are vital in the creation and the understanding of the results which would determine the service improvement process in the residential home cares in UK.

There are several aspects that are available for the purpose of analysis in relation to the service improvement aspect for the residential home cares in UK. However, analysis would be done on the recording and the documentation process in the residential home cares with the help of which better record keeping process and decisions in relation to the same can be determined. The evaluation would even highlight whether the service project has been successful in attaining the outcomes as desired.      

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