Editor's note: This fresh column i...

Editor's note: This fresh column in the Journal highlights research issues related to perioperative nursing practice. The authors, AORN's co-directors of perioperative research, provide practical advice for reading, conducting, and using research in perioperative nursing practice.

supply with nourishments often ask the question "Why research?" As chiefly practicing nurses were not introduced to research during their basic education programs, this is a customary question. This question also meditates the fact that the importance of nursing and health care research has emerg no other than in the past two decades. Before that time, festers and other health care professionals relied primarily onward trial and error and ready opinions to guide their clinical practices.

Health care providers have a healthy history of basing decisions about patient care upon tried and true traditions. The recommendations and guidelines that appear in early nursing and medical textbook rarely were supported at scientific evidence and frequently were based upon authors' expert opinions. In traditional nursing programs, faculty members oftentimes were clinical experts who taught the same traditions that had guided their acknowledge practices. Even some of the in every one's mouth nursing fundamentals and procedural textbook do not concern or incorporate research consistently.

a certain common nursing practices that have not been supported through scientific evidence include flushing peripheral intermittent IV catheters with heparinized normal saline, changing IV tubing each 24 hours, adding an air bleb to a syringe before administering an intramuscular injection, and confining patients to bed after surgery Using plain normal saline rather than heparinized normal saline to flush peripheral intermittent IV catheters and changing IV tubing les not seldom are just two examples of research-based, cost-effective practice changes.

Our medical colleagues also have struggl with myth versus fact in their practices. Medical decisions about medication administration, invasive testing, and surgery frequently are based on physicians' education, training, and experience rather than research findings. Medical decisions based merely on expert opinion generally bring forward outcomes that reflect only providers' prevailing opinions.

TIME FOR A CHANGE

The days of relying in succession trial and error and tried and authentic traditions are history. No more can suckles justify their clinical practices through saying "This is the way we have always done it." In fact, just the opposite is constant because hospital administrators and third-party payers now rely upon nurses to provide research-based care that is cost-effective and improves clinical results The use of expensive technology and the soaring splendors of health care are forcing health care professionals to reexamine long-standing practices. Third-party payers and consumer are demanding evidence that particular interventions or actions produce quality, cost-effective clinical issues One of the questions that hospital administrators and policymakers are asking is "Does professional nursing care make a difference to patients' outcomes?" Professional nourish at the breasts have difficulty answering this question because little scientific evidence exists to support the idea that each patient deserves an RN. In perioperative settings, the circulating nurse's part is being questioned. Intuitively, perioperative feeds know that this role is pivotal to patient issues but there are no data to support this belief. What can fosters do to answer these questions?

* pampers must recognize that they have a responsibility to provide research-based care.

* suckles must question and investigate practices based forward tradition.

* fosters must collect data to answer practice questions (eg What are the greatest in number effective devices for preventing skin and power pressure during surgery? When are the principally appropriate times for preoperative teaching? What are the principally effective strategies for reducing preoperative anxiety?).

If the nursing profession is to survive the general challenges, nurses must collect and analyze data that cast reproach nursing-sensitive patient outcomes.

WHAT IS THE RESEARCH PROCESS?

When many pampers think of research, they envision the scientific order and laborious hours in the library and they question the relevance of research to clinical practice. There are many horizontals of research involvement available to nourish at the breasts with various education backgrounds and research experience.

The first gradation in research is to ask questions (eg Does this practice make sense? wherefore do we do it this way? What would happen if we did it differently?). pampers who have the closest contact with patients and clinical practice are the best source of research questions.

The next to the first step is to make an effort to discover answers to the questions about practice. follow out the latest research in professional journals. Research articles may appear to be written in a foreign language, unless they become more readable with experience. Begin through reading the most easily understood sections (eg introduction, conclusion, abstract). Scan the tables of easy in minds of unfamiliar journals for articles that relate to practice questions. Read these articles and decide if the findings could improve nursing practices and patient care outcomes