NURSING ASSIGNMENT

Medical Nursing

Medical Nursing

Introduction

Over the course of the past century, numerous studies have been carried out with the purpose of highlighting the effects of depressive disorders on patients. Although there are several treatments for depression, the success or failure of a treatment program largely depends on how actively a patient participates in the treatment and how he responds to it (Bagby et al., 2008). This paper assesses the effectiveness of two of the most commonly used treatments for depressive disorders - Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Pharmacotherapy. The paper then draws comparisons between the outcomes of the two treatment programs.

Search Process

My motivation to conduct this study was that I was working as part of an acute day service where patients suffering from anxiety and depressive disorders visited on a daily basis. While several patients attended Cognitive Behavioral therapy (CBT) sessions for a maximum of 12 weeks, there were also several patients who did not attend them (Bagby et al., 2008). Instead, they relied on pharmacotherapy which mainly involved treating and curing anxiety and depressive disorders through medication. This prompted me to conduct an extensive analysis of previous research studies as a means of determining the differences between the outcomes for both the treatment methods (Bagby et al., 2008).

When it comes to an evidence-based decision-making process, it is as difficult as it is imperative to ask the right question. Since, asking the perfect question can mean the difference between success and failure, the first and most important step of the process is always to identify the patient problem or question. A well-planned and well thought out question a has four distinct elements that are essentially called PICO which is short for (Bagby et al., 2005, pp. 307-324):

Patient Problem or Population

This refers to the patient problems that are the subject of the research or the sample population that will be the targeted in the study. It is mostly useful to determine the patient problem or population so as to make searches more specific and narrow down the parameters of the search results (Costa et al., 2005, pp. 45-55). The patient problem selected for this study is depressive disorders. Hence, the sample population will consist of people suffering from this depression disorders.

Intervention

The second most important step of the PICO process is to identify the intervention strategy to be used. Identifying the intervention strategy to use for the sample population basically helps to determine what the study plans to do for the patient problem (Dimidjian et al., 2006, pp. 658-670). In this study, the primary mode of intervention was Cognitive Behavioral therapy.

Comparison

This is the third phase of the PICO process. It determines the primary alternative to be considered. The comparison process is strictly limited to just one option as its purpose is to facilitate an effective online search (Dobson et al., 2008, pp. 468-477). In this case, the results of CBT sessions were compared with Pharmacotherapy.

Outcome(s)

This is the final step of the PICO process. It determines what the entire process aims to accomplish (Ebstein, 2006, ...