Question

Pls provide a solution to this question and compose those answers in well-developed paragraphs and must be related to a healthcare organization. Pls, give more than one page. Thanks

Describe the "Peer Review" process and its components.

Answer 1

Peer-review is a critical part of the functioning of the scientific community, of quality control, and the self corrective nature of science. But it is no panacea. It is helpful to understand what it is, and what it isn’t, its uses and abuses. Peer review is a quality control measure for medical research. It is a process in which professionals review each other's work to make sure that it is accurate, relevant, and significant.

Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competences as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are used to maintain quality standards, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academia, scholarly peer review is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication. Peer review can be categorized by the type of activity and by the field or profession in which the activity occurs, e.g., medical peer review.

Professional peer review is common in the field of health care, where it is usually called clinical peer review. Clinical peer review, also known as medical peer review is the process by which health care professionals, including those in nursing and pharmacy, evaluate each other's clinical performance. A discipline-specific process may be referenced accordingly (e.g., physician peer review, nursing peer review).

Scientific researchers aim to improve medical knowledge and find better ways to treat disease. By publishing their study findings in medical journals, they enable other scientists to share their developments, test the results, and take the investigation further.

Today, clinical peer review is most commonly done in hospitals, but may also occur in other practice settings including surgical centers and large group practices. The primary purpose of peer review is to improve the quality and safety of care. Secondarily, it serves to reduce the organization's vicarious malpractice liability and meet regulatory requirements. In the US, these include accreditation, licensure and Medicare participation. Peer review also supports the other processes that healthcare organizations have in place to assure that physicians are competent and practice within the boundaries of professionally accepted norms.

Peer review is a central part of the publication process for medical journals. The medical community considers it to be the best way of ensuring that published research is trustworthy and that any medical treatments that it advocates are safe and effective for people.

Clinical peer review should be distinguished from the peer review that medical journals use to evaluate the merits of a scientific manuscript, from the peer review process used to evaluate health care research grant applications, and, also, from the process by which clinical teaching might be evaluated. All these forms of peer review are confounded in the term Medical Peer Review. Moreover, Medical peer review has been used by the American Medical Association (AMA) to refer not only to the process of improving quality and safety in health care organizations, but also to process by which adverse actions involving clinical privileges or professional society membership may be pursued. In addition, peer review methods are frequently used by state medical boards with respect to licensing decisions and complaint investigation. They are also used by insurance companies with respect to credentialing and utilization management processes.

Reasons for peer review
Peer review helps prevent the publication of flawed medical research papers.

Flawed research includes:

•     made-up findings and hoax results that do not have a proven scientific basis.
•     dangerous conclusions, recommendations, and findings that could harm people.
•     plagiarized work, meaning that an author has taken ideas or results from other researchers.

Peer review also has other functions. For example, it can guide decisions about grants for medical research funding.

Process

For medical journals, peer review means asking experts from the same field as the authors to help editors decide whether to publish or reject a manuscript by providing a critique of the work. There is no industry standard to dictate the details of a peer review process, but most major medical journals follow guidance from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

The code offers basic rules, such as, "Reviewers' comments should be constructive, honest, and polite." The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) are another association that offer ethical guidelines for medical peer reviewers. COPE also have a large membership among journals. These associations do not set out rules for individual journals to follow, and they regularly remind reviewers to consult journal editors.

Quality, relevance, and importance
The exact tasks of a peer reviewer vary widely, depending on the journal in question.

All peer reviewers help editors decide whether or not to publish a paper, but each journal may have different criteria.

A peer review generally addresses three common areas:

    Quality: How well did the researchers conduct their study, and how reliable are its conclusions? These points test the credibility and accuracy of the science under evaluation.
    Relevance: Is the paper of interest to readers of this journal and appropriate to this field of work?
    Importance: What clinical impact could the research have? Do the findings add a new element to existing knowledge or practice?

The editor will need to decide whether a paper is relevant, whether they have space for it, and if it might be more suitable for a different journal. If the editor decides that it is relevant, they may seek peer reviewers' opinions on the finer points of scientific interest. The journal editors make the final decision when it comes to publishing a study. Peer-review processes exist to inform the editor's decision, but the editor is not under any obligation to accept the recommendations of peer reviewers.

Flaws

Although peer review can help a publication retain integrity and publish content that advances the field of science, it is by no means a perfect system. The number of journals worldwide is increasing, which means that finding an equivalent number of experienced reviewers is difficult. Peer reviewers also rarely receive financial compensation even though the process can be time-consuming and stressful, which might reduce impartiality.

Personal bias may also filter into the process, reducing its accuracy. For example, some conservative doctors, who prefer traditional methods, might reject a more innovative report, even if it is scientifically sound. Reviewers might also form negative or positive preconceptions depending on their age, gender, nationality, and prestige. Despite these flaws, journals use peer review to make sure that material is accurate. The editor can always reject reviews that they feel show a form of bias.