Essay Sample on Nursing Research: Improving Care Quality & Influencing Policies

Introduction

Over the last few decades, the initiatives to develop individual, collaborative, or multicentric nursing research have multiplied throughout the world (Padilha, 2011). The objective of such initiatives is to improve the quality of nursing care provided, offering greater security to patients, and influence more effective health care policies. Clinical research, systematic literature reviews, convergent-care research, and phenomenological studies all share the same objective that is to respond to professional practice questions. However, despite all the knowledge that such efforts have produced, there is a vacuum among the studies on the use of the results from research performed in public or hospital health care services (Padilha, 2011). A major step in filling this vacuum is through transitional research. The European Society for Translation Medicine defines it as a scientific study into problems affecting patients, medical, or health professional to enhance the quality of the health sector of a country (Gohar, Gohar, Huelskamp & Debus, 2018). Therefore, translational research is significant to the clinical practice since it reduces health disparity, reduces the gap between health performance and medical practice, and creates a collaboration environment in the health sector.

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Translational research helps in reducing health disparity. According to Napoles, Santoyo-Olsson, and Stewart (2013), health disparity is a deliberate act or process through which a particular percentage of individuals are not able to obtain or access equal attention or medical treatment in certain health facilities. The education level, political affiliation, social status, and economic power of individuals often cause it. Thus, this issue, particularly in the less developed and developing worlds, has caused much to be preferred by significant stakeholders in clinical practice. Although these stakeholders always benchmark the most likely solutions to the health disparity problem, there is no available answer insight that comes to light. This influences research experts to adopt various methods in different studies, but no answer has been apprehended or solution reached. Transitional research, however, emerges to aid in decreasing such disparity in clinical practice because it embraces practical approaches while enquiring about the issues affecting the health sector (Napoles, Santoyo-Olsson & Stewart, 2013). In the process, it also considers a broad range of participants regardless of their economic power, social status, political affiliation, marital status, education level, and income level. Thus, sequentially and in the long-run, this gives an environment for equal health opportunities to every.

Translational research also bridges the gap between health performance and clinical practice. In the health industry of a country, research is always focused on the improvement of health performance. Research is often undertaken to fulfill the future and present challenges or needs experienced in the health sector to help overcome them. In the current health industry of any country, they are a gap between health performance and medical or health practice. Kahn et al. (2011) reveal that translational research is performed to nurture the health standards in clinical practice that will consequently result in improved comprehensive health performance. Rajan, Sullivan, Bakker, and Van Harten (2012) also state that translational research performs an investigation into various issues such as operational problems, practice lags, and administrative lags facing health performance and clinical practice. It achieves these results after the research process when the solution in sight to the problems is injected into the system. Therefore, this causes an improvement in the clinical practice that, in turn, result in enhanced health performance.

Translational research also and creates a collaboration environment in the health sector. Globalization trends have made studies to rotate around partnership globally. In every research, the partnership is a way of ensuring that the entire process of the study in a particular topic of interest is examined. The process is inspired to ensure a long-lasting answer to the problem is attained in the survey process. The partnership facilitates to ensure that essential information from the health care field cover as many stakeholders as possible. This will make sure that the findings of the whole study process solve the besetting issues for which the survey was conducted. This characteristic is highly beneficial in clinical practice for modern surveys to have a long-lasting answer to the problem-driven enquire. Therefore, translational research embraces partnership as a preceding device of making sure that the significant stakeholders are involved in the survey process. As stipulated by some researchers such as Rubio et al. (2010), translational research involves synergy among scientists emanating from different disciplines. Partnership thus aids create a strong collaboration between health practitioners, researchers, and patients among other populations in the clinical practice to enhance the health performance of a particular nation centered on the results of a research performed (Trochim, Kane, Graham & Pincus, 2011).

Translational research over the last few years has proved essential in filling the vacuum that has existed over decades on the use of the results from research performed in public or hospital health care services. In clinical practice, it has been important in reducing health disparity by considering participants regardless of their economic power, social status, political affiliation, marital status, education level, and income level. It also bridges the gap between health performance and clinical practice by investigating various performance-related issues and providing solutions. It also creates a collaboration environment in the health sector through partnership in the research process. Therefore, translational research is a significant study that should be conducted due to its importance in clinical practice for overall improvement in the health care sector.

References

Gohar, F., Gohar, A., Huelskamp, G., & Debus, O. (2018). The translational medicine professional: A bridge between bench and bedside?. Frontiers in medicine, 5, 294. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2018.00294

Kahn, K., Ryan, G., Beckett, M., Taylor, S., Berrebi, C., Cho, M., & Pincus, H. (2011). Bridging the gap between basic science and clinical practice: a role for community clinicians. Implementation Science, 6(1), 34. Retrieved from https://implementationscience.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1748-5908-6-34

Napoles, A. M., Santoyo-Olsson, J., & Stewart, A. L. (2013). Peer-reviewed Methods for translating evidence-based behavioral interventions for health-disparity communities. Preventing chronic disease, 10. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3839588/

Padilha, M. I. (2011). Translational research: what is its importance to nursing practice?. Texto & Contexto-Enfermagem, 20(3), 419-424. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-07072011000300001

Rajan, A., Sullivan, R., Bakker, S., & Van Harten, W. H. (2012). Critical appraisal of translational research models for suitability in performance assessment of cancer centers. The Oncologist, 17(12), e48-e57. DOI: 10.1634/theoncologist.2012-0216

Rubio, D. M., Schoenbaum, E. E., Lee, L. S., Schteingart, D. E., Marantz, P. R., Anderson, K. E., ... & Esposito, K. (2010). Defining translational research: implications for training. Academic medicine: journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 85(3), 470. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2829707/

Trochim, W., Kane, C., Graham, M. J., & Pincus, H. A. (2011). Evaluating translational research: a process marker model. Clinical and translational science, 4(3), 153-162. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-8062.2011.00291.x