[sharrie]

I am just finishing of an MSc and for my dissertation have to do a bit of research. Now I have a few research books which I am wading my way through but could use a bit of help.

My project is looking at Maintaining motivation in qualified nurses and the perceived effects of morale on patient care.

I am going to approach it using an action research approach because it is research within my own work area so will be working with the staff to improve morale and motivation.

I want to start with a questionare about what impacts on thier morale, how they motivate themselves to professionally develop and get involved with improving patient care and that kind of stuff.

Now I have never written a questionaire before so I thought I would start with some focus groups to establish common themes of what effects motivation and morale on the ward and from pick out the themes and design the questionaire.

Firstly, comments about my project (please don't be too harsh it is a work in progress) any pitfalls, issues or suggestions

Are there any resources out there that I can use for questionaire design, I have a few articles but if there are any websites or books that you think would be useful I'd be very grateful

Thanks
Sharrie

[EricEnfermero]

Sharrie,

Sounds like an interesting project! Question for you: When you examine patient care quality, will you be looking at objective indicators (length of stay, etc) or will it be more along the lines of collecting nurses' perceptions about patient care quality?

[sharrie]

Eric, I want to make it as inclusive as possible with the data collection, so length of stay, post operative complications and we have access to patient satisfaction audits as well, but it's the nurses stories that i am nore interested in. I think that the pateint satisfaction surveys will indicate a high satisfaction in care when in the same time frame the nurses feel it is poor. I am interested in when and why the nurses feel the care is comprimised

The original intention was to look at the care that the sicker patients were recieveing as our wards are having to look after pateints with a higher acuity and with more complicated care requirments but as part of the preliminary discussions with the ward staff raised that morale and motivation was an issue which they were concerned about. I figured to even start improving care these were issues that would need addressing first.

[Fonenurse]

Sharrie

Why did you decide on a questionnaire? Ever thought about doing focus groups? It's less directive and you may get more data from nurses if you just make it semi-structured and give them topic headings rather than questions which limit responses... I started a PhD looking at recruitment and retention of nurses in a particular service, so would love to discuss your work more - please PM me if I can be of any help...

If you continue with the questionnaire, I found the following books quite helpful:

Survey research the basics by Keith F Punch ISBN 0-7619-4705-1

Research Methods in Health: Investigating Health and Health Services by Ann Bowling

Best wishes!

[sharrie]

I did start with focus groups but trying to get the staff together to do a focus group is difficult. In fact because the ward I am looking at is one of the poorest staffed wards they are always so busy and running late off shifts, this is one of the main reasons i have chosen the area.

Thanks for the links I will take a look at them

[loved]

Dear Sharrie,

First of all, you need to decide what kind of research you are going to conduct, either quantitative or qualitative. Based on what I have read, it looks more like a qualitative study. If that is the case, you would like to conduct some kind of intenstive interview. If so, the questionnaire for intensive interview will have more open-ended questions and you might have to come out with new questions while you are conducting your interview.

If you decide to do a quantitative study, most questions included in your questionnaire will be close-ended questions. And you will need a large sample size (at least 50), utilizing a random selection process to ensure you to apply statistical techniques to analyze your data.
Having said that, I think you might want to do some literature review and see what other researcher approach this issue and hopefully, you might see the details of your questionnaire and get some more specific ideas.

Good luck, let me know what you think.

Originally Posted by sharrie

I did start with focus groups but trying to get the staff together to do a focus group is difficult. In fact because the ward I am looking at is one of the poorest staffed wards they are always so busy and running late off shifts, this is one of the main reasons i have chosen the area.

Thanks for the links I will take a look at them

[sharrie]

Originally Posted by loved

Dear Sharrie,

First of all, you need to decide what kind of research you are going to conduct, either quantitative or qualitative. Based on what I have read, it looks more like a qualitative study. If that is the case, you would like to conduct some kind of intenstive interview. If so, the questionnaire for intensive interview will have more open-ended questions and you might have to come out with new questions while you are conducting your interview.

If you decide to do a quantitative study, most questions included in your questionnaire will be close-ended questions. And you will need a large sample size (at least 50), utilizing a random selection process to ensure you to apply statistical techniques to analyze your data.
Having said that, I think you might want to do some literature review and see what other researcher approach this issue and hopefully, you might see the details of your questionnaire and get some more specific ideas.

Good luck, let me know what you think.

Thank you, it is going to be qualititive, which is just as well as i am really not very good at stats.

I have been looking at the initial information I have from informal chats to try to formulate a questionaire and there appears to be huge differences in what the staff feel is a high care patient, ranging from those that require complex dressing to those that should be in critical care.

I think I am going to need to do some work around what thier perceptions of a high care patient is otherwise the start point will be different for everyone which will complicate things.

Just going to start to look at literature about levels of care