Leveraging AI and Technology for Comprehensive Research: Tips for Researchers and Students

The research-to-practice gap.

Today’s rapidly changing health care settings require medical and nursing professionals and students to remain up to date on trending research, topics, and evidence for guiding practice. While this may sound fundamental for nurses, multiple barriers make this incredibly challenging. Factors such as limited time, large volumes of new research to sift through, and experience with reading and analyzing research contribute to what is known as the research-to-practice gap. This blog post will explore how to harness AI and technology to gain a high-level and comprehensive overview of a research topic of interest.

Define the topic.

Before leveraging AI tools, it’s critical to develop the focus of the topic of interest. It is helpful to frame or organize your topic or area of interest to ensure the search is thorough. For example, you could use the PICO format (patient/population, intervention, comparison, and outcomes) to phrase your question or area of interest.

Let’s say you want to learn more about skin damage related to external urinary devices for adult females. A good PICO question might be: Among adult females in acute care settings, what type of skin damage occurs when using external urinary devices compared to those who do not use these devices?

Search the literature.

Searching academic databases can be […]

2024-02-02T09:40:10-05:00February 1st, 2024|artificial intelligence (AI), Nursing, nursing research, Technology|0 Comments
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‘I Notice, I Wonder’: Demystifying the Research Process for Nurses

Alexa Curtis

Nurses are drawn to their profession out of interest in people and the human condition. In particular, nurses are committed to improving the physical and social circumstances of individuals and diverse populations. During the rigorous process of qualifying for admission and graduating from a nursing program, nurses demonstrate the capacity for acquiring and applying scientific knowledge. However, when it comes to actively engaging with nursing research, too often nursing professionals steer clear.

It is an interesting phenomenon, given that nurses by nature tend to be curious and innovative individuals. We rely on our ability to problem solve creative solutions to difficult situations. We are also highly dependent on the evolving scientific knowledge that informs our clinical practice. And most importantly, we care. We care about doing the best by people and communities. So where is the disconnect when it comes to engaging nurses in conversations about research ?

Thinking of research as ‘methodized curiosity.’

As an academic, I can say it may start with how we teach research in nursing school. The curricula for these courses tend to include large texts with obtuse terminology and complicated formulas. Although research language and data analytics are important to investigative inquiry, entry into the research realm can really be much […]

2022-11-10T10:14:48-05:00November 10th, 2022|Nursing, nursing research|1 Comment
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We Haven’t Made You Better: Orthopedic Trauma and Emotional Healing

Learning that healing the body isn’t always enough.

For much of my career as a trauma ICU nurse and orthopedic trauma nurse practitioner, I focused on building my knowledge of pathophysiology and mastering the assessment and procedural skills required to care for trauma survivors. After a decade of practice, I felt like I had entered the “expert” phase of clinical competence described by Dr. Patricia Benner in AJN in 1982.

But I was completely ignorant of a giant hole in my practice. A trauma survivor pointed out this gap during a routine clinic visit. Ms. H was six months removed from an ankle fracture she’d suffered in a motor vehicle collision on her way to work one morning. On exam, she had regained full strength and range of motion, the fracture was healed on radiographs, and her pain was limited to a minor ache after extended activity. She’d healed remarkably.

I told her that she had done an excellent job with her recovery and could resume her life, including going to work. I’ve come to believe that Ms. H’s response to this assertion changed my entire perspective on patient care. “I can’t go back to work,” she said. “Since the accident, I can’t get in a car without having panic attacks.”

I […]

2022-09-16T11:39:37-04:00September 16th, 2022|Nursing, nursing research, Patients|0 Comments
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Time to Stop Proving Burnout Exists and Start Researching Real Solutions

“Put simply, we know burnout exists and we know it’s getting worse. Let’s leave it at that and move forward. Let’s focus on what we know might mitigate burnout…”

That’s from this month’s Viewpoint, “Burnout Research at a Crossroads,” by Tim Cunningham and Sharon Pappas. Some readers may find it a relief to have this stated so baldly: let’s move on to solutions, say the authors. Let’s put research dollars, time, and energy behind the search for clearer information about what works and what doesn’t.

A two-pronged approach.

The authors see a crucial and legitimate place for investigation of what works and what doesn’t in wellness initiatives to support “personal resilience” through self-care (an increasingly nebulous term in itself).

But they caution against shifting the responsibility onto nurses’ shoulders and ignoring real systemic issues.

With this in mind, they call for research that first of all examines systemic factors:

“It’s only commonsensical that burnout and work experience are intimately tied. It’s time to look more closely at staffing, work hours, team nursing, equitable pay, and other work environment factors that may decrease burnout.”

[…]

2022-04-29T15:08:45-04:00April 28th, 2022|Nursing, nursing research, safe staffing|1 Comment
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DNR Does Not Mean Do Not Treat

Nurses and the meaning of DNR.

I recall a patient I had as a very new nurse who was designated as do not resuscitate, or “DNR.” The patient had suffered an intracranial bleed and because of his advanced age and untreatable cancer, his family had agreed that no CPR should be used. I remember the nursing supervisor asking me why the patient didn’t have a footboard and foam heel protectors on (that’s what we did back then); my answer was that he was a DNR patient. She basically handed me my head and said that his DNR status had nothing to do with good nursing care.

I never forgot that incident, and when I spoke with the authors of a mixed methods study with direct care nurses on three different units that found that “varying interpretations of DNR orders among nurses were common,” I immediately said yes. Their article is the original research article in AJN‘s January issue, “Nursing Perspectives on Caring for Patients with Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders.”

Families and providers may understand DNR differently.

And it’s not just nurses who may have different ideas and think differently about what should or shouldn’t be done for these patients who hover between life and death—other health care providers and families need to be clear on what that […]

2021-01-27T11:35:45-05:00January 27th, 2021|Nursing, nursing research|1 Comment
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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