Heartland Hospital Patient-Centered Initiative Evaluation

Introduction

Taking care of the mentally ill patients, at times takes a toll on the caregivers. Several caregivers end up in depression due to work-related stress. Taking, for instance, the Heartland Behavioral Healthcare Hospital, an inpatient facility that cares for the mentally ill patients, has several caregivers and patients as well. The caregivers in this institution may at some point feel drenched and emotionally drained hence need stress management skill to ease their depression before handling patients.

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A proposal, The Heartland Hospital Patient-Centered Initiative program, was presented to the hospital's board to help the caregivers handle their issues and get rid of distress before handling patients. The initiative was aimed at fostering self-care to caregivers, developing and implementing chart audits, and emphasis on the facility's policies and guidelines.

After the implementation of the above initiative, the following article is a measure of evaluation of the initiative's success on the facility.

Sampling

The initiative proposal mainly majored on identifying and getting ways to promote the health environment, especially emotionally, of the healthcare givers in mental hospitals, specifically the Heartland Behavioral health care facility. For this case, the parameter under study is the mental healthcare giver in this facility. On the ground, there exist several caregivers in the facility hence too large for a population study. Therein, a sampling procedure is required to level down the parameters to a manageable number. The sampled group of caregivers in this instance will reflect the ideas and outcomes of the larger group in the facility.

The appropriate sampling method required for this study is a stratified random sampling procedure. This method will major on dividing the parameters into subsections, known as strata. The members of each stratum have equal chances of being selected as the sample population. From each subgroup, the population is randomly selected (Center for Innovation in Research and Teaching, 2019). In this research, the parameters or population are all the mental health caregivers in the facility. After the identification of the parameters, the next step is to divide them into subgroups. These subgroups in our case will major on their age and work experience with people with a mental health condition. From their subgroups, random selection will be conducted to come up with a specific small population sample.

Although all parameters have one common factor that is care giving, this sample population can be referred to as heterogeneous. Despite them having a common factor, all of them are affected by diverse things and issues. One stress factor to an individual can be identified as a strengthening factor to their counterpart. Since the main aim of the initiative is reducing and learning how to control these stressful factors, this method of sampling is ideal. Additionally, stratified sampling can help a researcher identify small and most unreachable groups in the population (Explorable , 2019). This gives room for extreme and rare information. From this technique, high precision is guaranteed.

On the contrary, this method of sampling can offer unreliable results. For instance, after forming different strata based on age, the results variance can differ significantly causing adverse problems during data analysis and presentation, especially when basing to the overall population.

Based on the sampling plan in place, the results will be analyzed, and the results of the study will comprehensively detail all issues affecting the caregivers. However, during the sampling process, an assumption is taken that most caregivers of a certain age group have almost similar factors affecting their work life. This assumption was proved from research performed by (AF, TD, KB, Anstey, H, & ., 2005) that psychological distress, anxiety, and depression varies according to age and gender.

Sample Size

For the last three years, an approximate number of recipients that have been under the initiative are 100 caregivers, with 200 patients. In the healthcare facility, the ratio of caregivers to patients is often 1:2. That is, for every two patients, one caregiver is assigned.

From the population size, the sample size to be selected will be precisely 30 caregivers. Taking into consideration that the minimum age for a caregiver is 18 and the maximum age for a caregiver is 50, the population size will be divided into six groups basing on their ages. From the center's records, the majority number of workers in this facility is aged 34 to 44. From each subgroup, five caregivers will be selected randomly hence providing strata for the research.

Data Collection

Depending on the type of data in question, data can be collected through numerous methods. These methods include interviews, questionnaires, records, observations, surveys, ethnographic, etc. A method of data collection majorly is chosen depending on the type and size of data population and the in-depth of the information required (University of Minnesota, 2019).

In Heartland Hospital Patient-Centered Initiative, the main method of data collection to be used will be the observation method. Observational method of data collection can provide both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data, in this case, will represent narratives offered from the observational visits, while quantitative data will be collected from instructional times and frequency times. Under observation, the research will primarily focus on a naturalistic form of observation. This form of data collection involves studying the impulsive behavior of the population when exposed to their natural surroundings. In this method, the researcher will continuously record what they see without much contact with the population under study.

In regards to caregivers, the committee set to perform these observational researches will sequentially visit caregivers under study in their places of work, study their relationship with the patients and record all results.

The committee selected to perform the research will not whatsoever be recognized by the population under study. This is to limit biased results. Regarding quality of care, change of moods and attitudes, the committee will be issued with charts and previous behavioral recordings of the subject population. With the idea of their previous attitudes and moods while care giving, the observation method is bound to yield results after comparison. Additionally, the selected panel conducting the research will integrate with the caregivers, to not only gather information during their work hours but also get to study their relationship with their respective patients socially.

Naturalistic observation is commonly used during psychological or social kind of researches mainly having human beings as the target population. This method of research has a high chance of validity; additionally; it can be used to spawn new ideas, especially those that have never been thought before (McLeod, 2015). In this case study, the observers have a better chance of identifying any loopholes, ideas or strengths generated from the induction of the initiative proposal. This is so because this method will provide the committee with full authority over the situation and this leads to identifying news avenues of investigation not considered before.

On the same note, this method of research can be used in validating previous researches. Since the researcher on the ground, without being biased, he/she has a chance of comparing and validating previous researches. For instance, the initiative proposes that offering seminars to caregivers will lead to better skill mastery during patient delivery. During these observational trips, the committee will gather information on the ground that will either support or invalidate the previous findings from the initiative.

On the other hand, the main issue facing this method of data collection is time. When studying an individual who is not aware of what exactly you are looking for will take some time to express your interest. Although the researcher will gather real and natural data, time can be consumed before gathering the same information on a different environment (Ayres, 2016). Moreover, in this research, the main study aims at attitudes, moods and behavior changes on caregivers when suppressed to different circumstances. Since different people will have different attitudes at different times, several outcomes of the research will be required before covering up the same subgroup.

Political and Ethical Considerations

Ethical Considerations

Ethical and scientific soundness is a key area when dealing with human health research. The human protection codes in all researches should at least align with the international rules of health research recorded in the Belmont report of 1979.

a) Privacy and Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality are one of the key ethical practices to be practiced (World Health Organization, 2010). Privacy is termed as an individual having control over timing, extent, and situations of sharing physical, intellectual or behavioral characters with other parties. Confidentiality relates to the handling of information or data that a person has disclosed due to trust relationship and with the expectations of disclosure only with permission.

This research involves collecting and storage of personal information that once disclosed to a third party can cause distress to the primary party. For instance, this research involves studying and recording information pertaining to personal stress, mood, and attitude management during work. While gathering this information, the researcher or committee members selected to perform the research should arrange for confidentiality of any information gathered. This can be practiced by omitting private information that may lead to individual identification. This private information to be avoided includes personal names, identification number, address, national code or any personal indicator. This step will lead to making any data anonymous to other parties.

b) Intervene and Report

The researcher, in this case, the committee selected has a duty to intervene and report in case of any medical upcoming. Additionally, researchers have an ethical responsibility to report any findings collected to medical facilities once the research is complete. In this case, the information gathered from caregivers in the facility will be disclosed to the mental health facility for further clarification or policy changes.

Intervening during research, especially during observations, involves reporting any case to medics once a patient seems to have an impending harmful incident (World Health Organization, 2010).

c) Withholding Information

Once deception has been considered indispensable with the method of study, the researchers have to demonstrate to the ethical review panel explaining that there is no method of research that would satisfy the research; and that no information has been withheld, that if revealed can cause any rational person to refuse to be part of the research (World Health Organization, 2010).

For the research to be performed concerning the caregivers, the only information that will be withheld during the research is the association of the research with the initiative in place. Before this information is withheld from the population sample, the research committee will present these proposals to the ethical review board for approval.

Political Considerations

Policy makers are directly reliant on researchers. Once research has been conducted, findings are presented to policymakers for policy changes and adjustment. Pol...