Research Methods For Practice (How Myocardial Infarction (MI) Affects the Quality of Life Of Patients.

Essay by pricess04 May 2004

download word file, 12 pages 3.3

Downloaded 315 times

Research Methods for Practice

How Myocardial Infarction (IM) affects the Quality of Life of Patients.

The aim of this essay is to provide the writer with an introduction to the theory and practice of research in Health and Social Care. First and foremost the writer will choose a topic to conduct a thorough review of the literature, by using up to date database. Furthermore, the writer will aim to critique the literature in terms of reliability, validity and relevance.

In conclusion the writer will comment on implications for future practice and personnel developments.

The literature review focuses on 'How myocardial infarction (MI) affects the quality of life of patients, who have being discharged from hospital'. In search for the literature two databases were searched CINAHL (1995 - 2001) and MEDLINE (1990 - 2003). Keywords concerning myocardial infarction, quality of life, spouses, general practice information and hospital discharge were searched for.

Various combinations of these keywords produced different sets of papers, which were screened for relevance by reading abstracts or titles. Only papers reporting original data were included.

The writer will be critiquing five pieces of literature, four qualitative and one quantitative as posed in the table (Appendix 1). Before critiquing research Hek et al (2002) stipulates that it is important to recognise that critiquing does not necessarily mean being negatively critical. Critiquing is more about looking for strength and weakness in a study in light of the reader's knowledge and manner in which the research has been presented.

The writer's interest in this area developed whiles on a branch placement on a Coronary Care Unit in one of the teaching London hospitals. Being allocated patients and caring for them holistically, most patients voiced some psychosocial problems, which might affect them after discharge. One of the problems was the fact that...