Advanced Levels of Clinical Inquiry

Advanced Levels of Clinical Inquiry

Create a 6- to 7-slide PowerPoint presentation in which you do the following:

• Identify and briefly describe your chosen clinical issue of interest.
• Describe how you developed a PICO(T) question focused on your chosen clinical issue of interest.
• Identify the four research databases that you used to conduct your search for the peer-reviewed articles you selected.
• Provide APA citations of the four peer-reviewed articles you selected.
• Describe the levels of evidence in each of the four peer-reviewed articles you selected, including an explanation of the strengths of using systematic reviews for clinical research. Be specific and provide examples.

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What is Clinical Inquiry?

Melissa is a Bachelor prepared nurse working in the ICU. She is pursuing her Master’s degree and learning about clinical inquiry in nursing.

Clinical inquiry is the practice of asking questions about clinical practice. Throughout nursing school, we learn many things. Once we move into clinical practice, we learn even more! Many times we are learning from experienced nurses that are teaching us from their training and experience. As knowledgeable as these nurses are, sometimes the things we are taught are not best practice- although they may very well be common practice.

In an effort to continuously improve patient care, all nurses should consistently use clinical inquiry to question why they are doing something the way they are doing it. Do they know why it is done this way or is it just because we have always done it this way?

There are three areas that clinical inquiry can extend into. Quality improvement projects are used to improve patient care. Research is to generate new knowledge which is often carried into evidence-based practice. Evidence-based practice takes research and is implemented in patient care for the best outcomes.

Melissa is challenged to identify an area at work to practice her clinical inquiry.

Formulating PICO

Melissa has worked in the ICU for two years now and she often cares for patients with a tracheostomy. All of her training for managing a tracheostomy came from working with the nurses and respiratory therapists on her unit. She was always taught to squirt normal saline into the tracheostomy prior to suctioning. She understood that this helped to thin the secretions to be suctioned out.

With her new homework assignment to practice clinical inquiry, she now thought more about this practice. Any substances entering the lungs is harmful, so why is it ok to squirt normal saline into them?

The PICO framework is used to guide clinical inquiry into further investigation. P is to identify the problem, population, or patient. I is for the intervention in question. C is for a comparative intervention and O is for the outcome that results from the intervention.

Melissa attempts to use the PICO framework to address her clinical inquiry. (P) In a patient with a tracheostomy, (I) is the use of normal saline ( C) safe versus not using normal saline during suctioning (O) to remove secretions.