Nurse Patient Interactions Related to Diabetic Foot Care Research Paper

Diabetes Foot Care

Qualitative Research Critique: Diabetes Foot Care

Sue Flood (2009) saw a need to examine the nurse-patient interaction in relation to diabetes foot care outcomes, in part because at least one health care organization (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) has concluded that diabetes care received by patients often do not meet best practice standards. The impact of substandard care includes a 45 to 85% difference in the incidence of foot ulcers and amputations, as reported by the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The author further justified this study based on the ongoing global obesity and diabetes epidemics.

Flood (2009) decided to examine the nurse-patient interactions because this relationship has been shown to have a significant impact on patient outcomes. This represents the primary assumption the author tests in her study. The four components of nurse-patient interactions are: (1) affective support, (2) health information, (3) decisional control, and (4) professional or technical competencies (p. 362). Based on the nurse-patient interaction research literature in relation to diabetes foot care, the author concluded that little attention had been paid to patient outcomes. The three questions addressed in the author's study were (1) are nurse-patient interactions occurring in relation to diabetes foot care, (2) is practice setting a significant variable, and (3) do nurse demographics affect diabetes foot care nurse-patient interactions?

The survey sample consisted of registered nurses (RNs) working within a single Midwestern health care system, but assigned to either a medical-oncology unit, surgical unit, or two home healthcare agencies (Flood, 2009).Advance practice nurses or nurses in management positions were excluded from the survey. The sample size was 42 RNs with either associate or bachelorette nursing degrees. Approval for a human subjects study was obtained from the Oakland University Institutional Review Board; therefore, ethical standards were met.

Demographic data was collected, but a survey instrument designed to query respondents about the nurse-patient interactions in relation to diabetes foot care did not exist; therefore, a Nurse-Patient Interaction Questionnaire (NPIQ) was created based on a published client encounter form (Flood, 2009). A higher NPIQ score represented higher levels of nurse-patient interactions. All questions on the NPIQ were summed, but one question was reverse coded. Several statistical analyses were performed using the widely used statistical package SPSS. As long as the NPIQ questionnaire is available upon request, the study can be replicated. If the data could also be obtained, an….....