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My first week at Trinity, Ashford has gone so quickly! From day one I have been very busy with a lot of different tasks to do. I began the week by finding journals about evidence-based practice within healthcare particularly surrounding the mentoring of pre-registration students. When I first started I really wasn’t sure what evidence-based practice was, but I have now found out that it means using evidence from studies that have been conducted to influence medical practice. Surprisingly though, one study has shown that it can take around 17 years for evidence gained through research to be implemented in health care (Balas & Boren, 2000)! The research I have done so far has really helped me with getting my head around the study that I will be helping to conduct in the coming weeks.
On Wednesday, I attended a nurse mentoring update training with the lead researcher. It was interesting to listen in to how undergraduate students learn to become nurses and how they are assessed. After the training we conducted a focus group with the nurses. We asked them questions about how they integrate evidence-based practice into their everyday work, any barriers or facilitators that they experience and how they encourage students to do evidence-based practice. We had some good responses, which I will be able to share near the end of my placement!
Thursday I spent transcribing the voice recordings taken at the focus group. It took an hour to transcribe every 5-7 minutes of recording! I had to be very careful to get exactly what the participant had said; this will be critical for data analysis later on. From the focus groups completed so far (two had been done before I started), we have decided to alter our method of data analysis to make the research more effective. This has shown me how important pilot studies are to get the most out of research.
Unfortunately on Friday I had major tech issues and despite the best efforts of the tech guys Jon and Martin, it seems that the laptop I was provided with has given up on me!
Although I was really nervous on my first day, this week has been great. The team I’m based with are absolutely lovely and have really helped me to settle in. Hopefully the next week will be just as good!
For your interest:
Balas, E. A., & Boren, S. A. (2000). Managing clinical knowledge for health care improvement. Yearbook of Medical Informatics, 2000(2000), 65-70.