Performance in Bedside Care Nurses

Performance in Bedside Care Nurses

Running head: ARTICLE CRITIQUE 1

ARTICLE CRITIQUE 4

Article Critique

Institution

Name

Article Critique

Introduction

In the field of research, article critique plays a key role in analyzing scholarly works in order to establish their strengths and weaknesses. Critiquing an article helps to identify how authors present their arguments and whether they achieve the ultimate goal of contributing to the body of knowledge. This paper involves the process of objective analysis of research article entitled “Fatigue, Work Schedules, and Perceived Performance in Bedside Care Nurses” in the bid to evaluate major findings presented by the authors.

Phenomenon of Interest

The authors of this paper are very clear on what they what to achieve from the study as far as the performance of nurses is concerned. The researchers were driven by the fact that only a few studies have conducted to establish how work-related fatigue can affect the performance of nurses –leading to lack of patient safety and negative health outcomes. Thus, the main aim of the authors is to improve Lebanese nursing care hence ensuring the achievement of quality healthcare.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study was to establish various factors that affect the quality of healthcare in Lebanon. The researchers are very clear that nurses offering healthcare services should maintain high work performance levels in order to provide quality care to patients. However, issues such as work-related fatigue hinder effective nursing practice hence leading to negative patient outcomes. Hence, the researchers sought to establish how work-related fatigue affects individual work performance of nurses –hence hampering effective and efficient nursing practice.

Study Design

Descriptive cross-sectional research design was used for this study. A survey was conducted and questionnaires issued to Registered Nurses who were allowed to fill and return them to the collection boxes –where the researchers collected them for analysis. The survey involved 100 RNs who worked on full-time basis. Nursing Performance Instrument was used to gauge the perceptions of nurses regarding their mental and physical performance when offering care to patients. However, but there were a number of loopholes when picking the samples. First, the gender size was not gender sensitive, that is, more females were involves compared to males. Secondly, only those RNs who were fluent in English were selected –hence locking the non-English speakers out of the research process. Thirdly, the NPI scale used involved the omission of “two items that resulted to less scale reliability” hence affecting the results (Sagherian et al., 2017). Finally, the cross-sectional design used could not demonstrate the relationship between fatigue and performance quite effectively.

Sampling

A combination of purposive and convenience sampling techniques was used. Unlike random sampling where samples include equal number of both genders, the samples for this research were selected based on other criteria established by the researchers. For instance, out of sample size of 100 RNs, 77 of them were females. On the other hand, the sample involved RNs who were proficient in English. Notably, the sampling techniques used in this research were a bit inconvenient since the sample size was not a representative of the larger population of RNs.

Data Collection

Notably, the respondents were issued with questionnaires which they were allowed to fill and return to the researchers after two weeks. Most of the based on scale marking hence ensuring that the responses were uniform for easy analysis. Moreover, the respondents were allowed to fill the questionnaires at their own convenience without any influence from the researchers. This was indeed and important data collection instrument.

Data Analysis

SPSS (v. 22) data analysis software was used to analyze the data captured in the questionnaires that were fully completed by the selected RNs. The data missing accounted for 1.5% of the total questions filled. The standard deviation was more than +/- 3. Moreover, the Pearson’s correlations “were used to examine the relationships among acute and chronic fatigue, inter-shift recovery, and overall nursing performance” (Sagherian et al., 2017). These techniques used to analyze data were appropriate and effective for this research.

Findings and Discussion

From the analysis, four out of the total number of RNs who participated in the process worked for more than one unit within the healthcare. Moreover, 27.3% of the participants noted that they slept for about 6 to 7 hours while 31.2% noted that they slept for about 5 to 6 hours. 68.4% of the respondents reported fatigue since they did not have enough sleep to refresh their minds. 19.5% worked for a 12-hour shift and overtime working was also reported whereby 22.7% worked for over 41 hours a week. Notably, 43% of the respondents noted that they experienced workload perceptions that hindered their performance. Generally, a huge percentage of the participants experienced fatigue that hindered their performance.

Conclusion

The research findings showed that there was a close relationship between fatigue and reduced work performance. This reduced performance could indeed lead to safety hazards and negative patient and nurse outcomes. The findings of this research will be useful in helping hospital management to develop proper scheduling to ensure that RNs are not overloaded with work –something that would help to avoid fatigue in order to improve performance.

Reference

Sagherian, K., Clinton, M. E., Abu-Saad Huijer, H., & Geiger-Brown, J. (2017). Fatigue, work schedules, and perceived performance in bedside care nurses. Workplace health & safety, 65(7), 304-312. https://doi.org/10.1177/2165079916665398.