Research Critique: “Unreported Workplace Violence in Nursing”

Quantitative Article Critique

Quantitative Title and Abstract

Unreported workplace violence in nursing, does not seem to be a detailed title in this case. One would not be able to understand the content or even specific interests of the researchers except that they would be investigating cases of unreported workplace violence within the field of nursing. A good title should incorporate the specific interests of the researchers and cover issues, such as the place where the study is conducted, the applied concepts, the variables, and the method that is used. In this case, it would be important to know that the study is quantitative and that the researchers investigated Slovenian nurses.

As for the abstract, it can be noted that the authors divide it into a number of titled subsections that include background, aim, methods, results, conclusion, and implications for nursing and health policy. From a general perspective, such abstract can be considered as appropriate and proficient in that it provides the reader with all the required information. However, looking at the abstract in detail, the methods section does not provide adequate information regarding how the participants were found or what criteria were used to include them in the study. Regarding the results, Kvas & Seljak (2014) were thorough in their presentation of the findings of the study. The results presented in the given part of the paper actually encourage the audience to read through the rest of the article.  

Quantitative Introduction

An introduction is primarily meant to provide necessary data regarding what the researchers will be doing through the research. Correspondingly, an introduction section should familiarize the reader with everything in the background of the study, including the problem being investigated, the guiding research questions, the literature review that was used to conceptualize the problem, and the conceptual and theoretical framework that was applied for finding a solution. The article, Unreported workplace violence in nursing, provides an in depth background description on the issues surrounding workplace violence and how it has impacted the nurses globally. The authors start by explaining the state of workplace violence within the health care profession, using many insightful statistics that help put the problem into perspective. They also define workplace violence within the nursing context in order to provide a clearer understanding on the entire problem under investigation.

However, it can be noted that the authors do not provide the expected headings, such as statement of the problem, hypotheses or research questions, literature review, and conceptual/theoretical framework. The first section is simply titled as ‘Background’ and the authors discuss the subject of workplace violence in a manner that suggests they are giving the statement of the problem. Workplace violence is a very broad topic. Nevertheless, within the nursing field and in this particular article, Kvas & Seljak (2014) have significantly reduced it to include any form of threat, abuse or assault that the nurse experiences at the workplace. Consequently, the manner in which the study defines workplace violence helps the research establish the terms of reference for the study. Furthermore, Kvas & Seljak (2014) argue that many nurses experience some form of workplace violence, but they do not report it for one reason or another. Such experiences generally affect the nurses’ abilities to focus on their work or even on their decisions to remain in a specific health care organization or not. A detailed statement of the problem in this case helps the reader internalize the findings of the study and appreciate why the study is important. In the current study, namely Unreported workplace violence in nursing, the authors present their statement of the problem effectively.

The research questions of the given study are presented in the form of research goals and they can be found in the last paragraph of the introduction section. The authors describe the first goal of the research as establishing the groups of Slovenian nurses that are more exposed to workplace violence. It means that the researchers would be trying to establish the specific groups of nurses that are at a higher risk for workplace violence. The second research aims at establishing what the victims of workplace violence do after they have been victimized. The interest in this case was to establish whether they report the incident or not. The researchers simply wanted to understand how many of the cases of workplace violence in Slovenia were being reported to the relevant authorities. The last research goal, on the other hand, was to find out what the victims think regarding how the situation could be improved. It entailed asking for the victims’ perspectives regarding possible solutions concerning the issue of workplace violence. As a result, it is important to note that the authors were able to present and explain all of their research aims and objectives for the study within the last paragraph of the introduction.

The research under consideration does not present a literature review or a theoretical/conceptual framework. A literature review is important for the formation of the study, since it allows the researchers to explore the available information and establish a knowledge gap within the field of interest. The literature review also ensures that the reader of the study will understand with more clarity the justifications of the problem under investigation based on the previous studies conducted on the same subject or on the related subjects. Studies that do not have a literature review are often more difficult to understand and follow, since their foundations are not fully stated. The theoretical or conceptual framework for the study is also not stated explicitly. Consequently, it becomes comparatively difficult to understand the basis of the study without reading beyond the introduction. A theoretical framework explains the theory on which the research is based. Therefore, the study offers an insight into how the collected data will be treated and the nature of information that will be collected and collated. Nevertheless, without a theoretical framework, it becomes difficult for the reader to understand the rest of the study. A good introduction should have all the important information about the study that is supposed to justify the researchers’ actions in the rest of it. Without the information, the study becomes incomplete and for the most part impossible to replicate, since the reader cannot really understand the concepts and theories that underlie the researcher’s decisions within the study.

Qualitative Article Critique

Qualitative Title and Abstract

The title of a qualitative study has to be appropriate for the kind of enquiry that the researcher is expecting to perform. It means that there is a need for the title of the study to be informative and provide a few details regarding the applied concepts and methods, as well as the variables of interest. The Concept of Patient Satisfaction in Adolescent Psychiatric Care: A Qualitative Study is a qualitative study that explores the perceptions of adolescent psychiatric patients in relation to patient satisfaction. The title is considerably satisfactory because it provides information on the exact interests of the researchers. It can be clearly seen from the title that the researcher is interested in adolescent psychiatric patients. Moreover, the reader can easily understand that the authors will be investigating patient satisfaction and that they have used a qualitative method to accomplish their aims and objectives. The title lists the methods, the variables, and the concepts used in the study, thus, qualifying for the best example of an appropriate title or a qualitative study.

However, the abstract is comparatively brief and it lacks various vital details. The authors present the abstract with four titles, including problem, methods, findings, and conclusions. The problem section has only two sentences where the authors decry lack studies on how adolescents perceive psychiatric care and that the study is aimed at establishing the perceptions of such adolescent patients with an interest in quality of care and satisfying outcomes. In the methods section, the researchers do not explain any of the methods used in the study. They simply state that fourteen adolescents participated but there are no details regarding how the participants were chosen, where they were found, and whether they were male, or both. Predominantly, one cannot tell much about the study’s methods from the abstract. A good abstract should provide all the critical information regarding the research process. Under the study’s findings, Biering & Jensen (2010) present a number of concepts that were identified during the study to be related to the perceptions of the adolescents with respect to psychiatric care and satisfying treatment outcomes. The mentioned concepts include love, self-expression, peer solidarity, and secure place among others. These were the recurring concepts that the participants were reported to use in describing their perspective on adolescent psychiatric care. The conclusions section in the abstract is also very brief and unsatisfactory. The researchers simply state that the study offers guidance for health care providers in the field of adolescent psychiatry with regards to improving their service delivery to adolescent patients. Nevertheless, there are no clear details on how the study’s findings can help in achieving it, thus, making the conclusion very incomplete.   

Qualitative Introduction

The article is considerably well-written but seems incomplete in its content delivery. The introduction part is particularly impressive and well-detailed. The authors provide the reader with much background information aimed at creating a context within which the study can be understood. First, the study explores the fields that constitute adolescent psychiatry and why it is different from adult psychiatry. Many scholars have investigated patient satisfaction in adult psychiatry with little concern about the adolescent patients. As a result, any information on patient satisfaction within the field of psychiatry is based on what adult patients think and feel in regard to the services that they receive. It means that the adolescent patients are not considered taking into account that they have different perspectives on most subjects compared to the adults. The significance of understanding what the adolescent patients think is clearly explained in this part of the article.  

The researchers also make a clear presentation of the research questions. The study is driven by two objectives. First, the researchers wanted to find out which concepts are associated with quality care for the adolescent psychiatric patients. To do it, they state that it is important to find out how the adolescent patients define quality psychiatric care. The patients, in this case, had to provide their own perspective on what they think could be considered a quality psychiatric care. The second objective was to establish the treatment outcomes that the patients appreciate or recognize as satisfactory. This part of the study would be aimed at understanding what the patients expect when they visit a psychiatrist. Biering & Jensen’s (2010) definitions of satisfactory psychiatry outcomes would be used to define the expected outcomes of satisfactory psychiatric care for the adolescents.

The literature review presented in this article is very interesting and detailed. The authors were able to investigate many existing researches in order to create a basis for their study. The first most impressive factor would be the way the literature review is presented. Each study is considered individually and analyzed for its main arguments before its relevance to the research is stated. A good literature review is supposed to provide a clear guideline for the direction that a study is going to use. Each reviewed source has to contribute to the study to some extent considering that reviews and articles have information that has been validated by other researchers in the field. Such information could be definitions, new arguments or even new evidence that can influence the research at hand.

Without a clear literature review, it becomes difficult to determine whether the research at hand has been conducted already. For the particular article, it could be noted that there had been many other similar studies aimed at explaining patient perspectives on quality psychiatric care. Nevertheless, these studies all featured adult patients. Consequently, the researchers were able to use necessary information from the previous studies and provide an effective research with the adolescent patients. For this purpose, numerous studies were used that explain the differences in perspectives between adults and adolescents. Biering & Jensen (2010) do not include their conceptual underpinnings in the study. It may be caused by the fact that it has already been covered in the literature review considering that they were able to present a number of sources that had been dealing with the same outcomes but within a restricted sample population. In the given case, the adolescent psychiatry patients were simply being asked to present their perspectives within a study that has already been conducted with adult patients. Ultimately, all the required information is available in the current section of the study.