Nursing 563

Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) summarize information on a medical topic and make recommendations for clinical practice. These are written for medical professionals to help ensure that patients receive the best care available based on the current evidence. Clinical Practice Guidelines are generally written by a committee and are sponsored by a professional association or the government.

For this assignment, you will need to find a single clinical practice guideline. You should search for a guideline that is published in a journal; you may see brief guidelines on an organization website, but you will need to retrieve the full guideline, not just the highlights. Since your question is about a clinical intervention, this study types probably won't help answer your question. You will need to modify your keywords to find a CPG.

Later in the course, you will be tasked with finding a qualitative study. Information on how to do that is listed below. 

Finding a Clinical Practice Guideline:

You can find CPGs in traditional databases like PubMed and CINAHL, as well as in point of care databases (like Dynamed and Clinical Key for Nursing) or directly from organizational websites (such as the NIH, the VA's website, or an association like the American Psychiatric Association). 

Links to specific resources for finding CPGs can be found on our Nursing Resources Guide.

Finding a Qualitative Study:

If your question cannot be answered using a qualitative study, you will need to modify your search; this may mean finding a study that is related to your topic, but not exactly on-point, such as looking at how patients feel about this intervention. You can introduce new keywords or use controlled vocabulary to find qualitative studies. For example:

• In PubMed, combine your search term for the topic of interest with "Qualitative Research"[Mesh]
• In CINAHL, combine your search term for the topic of interest with (MH "Qualitative Studies+")
• Using the keyword qualitative can be helpful
  • Additional keywords include terms that discuss study methods (i.e., interview OR focus group OR ethnographic OR grounded theory OR narrative), or terms that talk about what you are attempting to learn about (i.e., attitudes OR experiences OR beliefs)
  • Other subject headings such as Attitude of Health Personnel [mh] (in PubMed) or MH Nurse Attitudes (in CINAHL) can also be helpful
• Some databases have filters to limit by study type. In CINAHL, you can find this filter on the Advanced Search page, under the Clinical Queries filter.
  

More detailed strategies for finding qualitative research can be found on the University of Washington's Finding Qualitative Research Articles guide.

References

Wilczynski, N.L., Marks S., & Haynes, R.B. (2007). Search strategies for identifying qualitative studies in CINAHL. Qualitative Health Research, 17(5); 705-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732306294 
Get it @ GU