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Chapter 9 we show you, step by step, how to undertake a small research project from the initial stages of thinking about your project and looking for sources of funding, through to preparing and submitting your bid, thinking about good research governance, leading your research team, and finally sharing, through dissemination, your research findings. We acknowledge our narrative is a theoretical account as, after all, we have written a research ‘textbook’. Therefore we are reliant on you, the student, to put our ideas into practice, in other words to bridge the theory–practice gap and ‘have a go’ at doing research. Good luck! SD and PN 2013 03_preface.indd 9 13/09/2013 16:27 03_preface.indd 10 13/09/2013 16:27 xi Acknowledgements Sue would once again like to thank Simon Dyson for encouraging and supporting her efforts in all things work and life. Thanks to Emma and Matt McCartney and to Rehana Dyson, simply for being in my life. Thank you to all the nursing students who, over the years, have been recipients of my research teaching. I hope to have made a difference, at least in terms of encouraging an interest in research. Thanks to my mum who has in recent months helped me understand the meaning of dignity and fortitude – well done Mum. This book is dedicated to you. Peter would like to thank his wife, Sarah and their children, Catherine and John, who are working their way through their A levels at the time of writing this second edition. This is an expanded edition, so I will similarly expand the acknowledgments (apologies). My father Tom remains in our thoughts, but this is also a good opportunity to thank my stepmother Olive for her grammatical rectitude and kindness. Thanks again to my brother Alan, to my sister in-law Gwen, and to Roger and Sue Blackwell for enlivening our holidays and being unflagging advocates for their grandchildren. Time has flown, but despite all (and possibly against my better judgment), I remain grateful to the late Carlos Castaneda, who introduced me to the curandero, Don Juan of New Mexico. 04_acks.indd 11 13/09/2013 16:27 04_acks.indd 12 13/09/2013 16:27 1 Chapter 1 Understanding the language of research Introduction The preface to this book indicates the level of importance we place on an understanding of research for nurses and midwives. More now than ever, in the changing face of healthcare provision and delivery, it is imperative that nurses and midwives – indeed all those at the interface between service provision and service delivery – need to have a sound knowledge of research, including how to seek out and understand the best available evidence to underpin and facilitate the highest quality practice. Students of nursing and midwifery are keen to know their discipline, to become expert in that discipline and to make a difference to the patients, clients and families they come into contact with. In essence our students want to learn the ‘tools of their trade’, so to speak. However, while we believe research to be the key to advancing knowledge of our subject, essential in helping make the right decisions regarding care delivery, and most important of all, vital to the creation of new knowledge within our discipline, our experience over many years of teaching research to nurses and midwives tells us that often the language of research is off-putting at the outset. When we introduce the topic of research early in the nursing and midwifery curriculum, students are not always ready to embrace it as an essential element of their discipline, being keen to learn the theory of their subject and to develop the necessary skills required for practice. What we have then, is a tension within the curriculum around when to introduce the topic of research, and how to teach it in a meaningful way. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) requires students first and foremost to be competent and safe practitioners. An essential element of comch_01.indd 1 13/09/2013 16:24 Research skills for nurses and midwives 2 petency in practice is an understanding of the evidence base for practice at a level which ensures sound decision-making in relation to care delivery. This requires students to be able to read research, critically appraise what they are reading, and be confident that the methods described are the correct ones in relation to a given research problem or question; that the research process was carried out systematically, with due diligence paid to ethical issues, and that the findings can be relied upon as grounded in good research practice. These are our goals when teaching research within the nursing and midwifery curriculum; hence our book is based on achievement of these goals and written in such a way as to support research teaching, however and wherever it is manifest in your degree programme. While we accept that the language of research may be unfamiliar, we ask for your perseverance. You will become conversant with the language of research through reading this and other books about research for nurses and midwives. As a nursing or midwifery student, you will be familiar with the language of nursing and midwifery practice, including well-known acronyms – for example BP (Blood Pressure), TPR (Temperature, Pulse and Respiration), CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation), A/N (Antenatal), Cx (Cervix) and CTG (Cardiotocograph). You may recall being introduced to this language early in your
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