Nursing Article Critique

Nursing Article Critique



Nursing Article Critique

Introduction

The following critique is a requirement for the nursing research class. The article under review is “How Nurses Learn Advocacy”, written by Foley, Minick & Kee, (2002). How Nurses Learn Advocacy is a qualitative study to find out how nurses learn to be a patient advocate. The purpose of this article is to critique the title, research problem, research purpose, review of literature, research question, research design, setting, subjects, data collection method, data analysis procedures, findings, author's discussion, theoretical development, and provide a an over all conclusion of the research article, How Nurses Learn Advocacy.

Title

The title, How Nurses Learn Advocacy, is to the point of the article's purpose. The title does not reflect, however, the limitation of the sample. I believe a better general title would be the following: How Military Nurses Learn Advocacy. The original title still provides insight into what the article is trying to accomplish. The title does imply a qualitative research approach because it is hard to quantify a person's learning experience of developing a skill.

Research Problem

This problem is clearly stated and found in the article. It is in the first paragraph of the article and is the topic of the paragraph. Foley et al., (2002) makes a good argument for the need of advocacy for the patient. The authors also point out advocacy could be used as an organizing concept for a nursing curricula but their review of literature did not reveal such a curricula.

Research Purpose

The purpose of this study was to describe how nurses learn the skill of advocating for patients.

Review of Literature

The reader has to take the authors' word that there is not enough research out there on development of patient advocacy. The authors do not state where they looked for literature. There was no mention of any literature that told how advocacy was taught and the reader is told there is no literature to that regard.

Since the authors could not find any literature on the development of advocacy in the nurse, they emphasized the importance of advocacy and when it is used in nursing. The authors used mainly four studies to relate advocacy to the workplace. The four studies were dated as follows: 1993, 1993, 1996 and 2000. The literature review had other studies supporting advocacy was being used internationally. These works came from the United Kingdom and the years of publication ranged from 1981 to 2000.

Research Question

No research question could be clearly found but one was implied. The implied research question is: How do nurses learn advocacy? The authors jump around the subject but never clearly state the question. Answering the question is the purpose of the research article.

Research Design

The design of How Nurses Learn Advocacy is a “Heideggerrian hermeneutic phenomenological approach” (Foley et al., 2002). This type of design is controversial for this study. The phenomenological approach is appropriate for the purpose of the study, but the authors try to form theories to help in the real ...