Critical appraisal of a nursing quantitative study Essay

Critical appraisal of a nursing quantitative study - Essay Example is critical exposure of the nurse participants their levels of hygiene compliance despite work load and is important I self evaluation for personal competence improvements. The participants could also develop a better understanding of mediator roles of external factors on the nurses’ motivation and ability to comply with standards. This could then inform the nurses for self initiatives to managing the environmental factors towards higher level competence and compliance to hygiene standards and other standards. The major risk that the authors do not identify is possible psychological effects of the nurses knowledge of their lack of compliance because of the potential consequences of the non compliance to quality of delivered services. The authors are also silent on the process of recruiting research participants. There was however informed consent from research participants and administrator of the hospital facility that was used for data collection. Existence of informed consent further suggest voluntary participation by the involved nurses. It is however difficult to report possible approval by the institutional review board because the researchers do not report on it. Meeting minimum requirements for publication, such as ethical principles, however suggest that the authors ensured institutional review board approval besides informed consent and voluntary participation. The major variables are identified, though not explicitely, but are not defined. External factors, interms of work load, is the independent variable while staff compliance with hand hygiene standards is the dependent variable. personal observations and interviews were used for data collection and even though the researchers do not explain their rationale for choice of data collection methods, advantages such as convenience and unlimited access to information suggest the choice (Kothari, 2004). Data collection occurred over a one year period, beginning in June 2007 and ending in May 2008. It was