Question

What is the value of qualitative research in the article you selected to evidence based practice?

Answer 1

Qualitative research has been used by many professions like nursing, political science and education to answer the research questions. Recently qualitative methods are used to answer health services research and policy questions. The qualitative research adds to the base of evidence-based-holistic nursing practice.

Evidence-based practice has evolved over the past decade. It has an important role in managing cost pressures, consumer awareness and information dissemination. Evidence-based practice is the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. It ensures the best use of theory-derived, research-based information in making decisions about care delivery to patients. Individual needs and preferences are also preserved in evidence-based practice.

Qualitative research can address the research questions that are different from those considered by clinical epidemiology. It can investigate providers and patient’s attitudes, beliefs, and preferences, and can answer how evidence can be turned into practice. The qualitative research allows pursuing systematically the kinds of research questions that are not easily answerable by experimental methods.

We use the example of asthma treatment to illustrate how qualitative methods can broaden the scope of evidence-based medicine. Although there is consensus over the evidence-based practice in the treatment of asthma,8 questions remain about general practitioners’ use of clinical guidelines and patients’ use of prescribed medication.

The gap between scientific evidence and clinical practice can be bridged by qualitative research. Its findings provide rigorous accounts of treatment regimens in the care contexts.

Qualitative methods help in following aspects:

• Naturalism – the understanding of treatment regimens in everyday situations
• Interpretation— the meaning of symptoms and treatment regimens for patients and practitioners
• Process—the change meanings over time. The qualitative studies consider the social life as a process and the interventions and the changes they bring have to be accommodated within the patient’s social life.
• Interaction— the communication between patients and practitioners and their effect on the meaning of care
• Relativism—the different perspectives of scientific “reality”.
• Qualitative studies often consider the encounters or interaction between health care provider and their patients to achieve good outcomes.
• Attitudes and adherence concepts: patients views and perspectives on medication are addressed in qualitative studies.

Advantages:

·        The major contribution of qualitative research to the evidence-based practice is generating hypotheses.

·        The development and validation of instruments for research.

·        Qualitative research can be used to validate quantitative instruments.

·        It can provide the situation or context for evaluating evidence-based practice in nursing.

·        It can act as a base for developing nursing interventions for evidence-based practice.

·        It helps in the development of new research questions.

·        Qualitative Outcome Analysis method extends the findings of a qualitative study into clinical application and subsequently evaluates the effects of the application on patients' responses.

The qualitative research answers many questions not easily addressed by randomized controlled trials. So the importance of it in the evidence-based practice concept is very important. The collection of “good evidence” needs to go further the results of randomized controlled trials. The right kind of research has to be utilized to answer the questions posed. The qualitative research makes important contributions to the quality of evidence-based practice as the evidence-based practice is a growing phenomenon in nursing and the qualitative research, alone or in combination with quantitative research, helps formulate achievable nurses' goals to provide the best health care within an often fiscally constrained environment.