PSA to our colleagues conducting research on Allnurses

Nurses General Nursing

Published

One of the most difficult surveys to conduct are online surveys, because it takes people willing to actively stop what they're doing, and take personal time out of their day to follow the stinking links and enter their answers.

Those that blow through here and drop a bomb of, "Please help me conduct my MSN/Capstone project!" and yet can't take a few minutes themselves to respond to their own threads -- pretty much stink.

There are thousands of nurses in here, and many of us will need each other to help gather data in our own future projects. This could be a great place for such data-gathering.

So, please, if you are going to present a plea for respondents, at least respond to your own thread.

Kthxbye.

Edit to add: mods will have this thread moved to the unseen hinterlands of the "Colleague/relations" forums before I can click my little red slippers. Cue the flying monkeys. :)

Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
you'd do the application for CEUs from your state nursing association or BoN (whichever applies)

Unfortunately, I would not be able to meet this criterion, as my state does not recognize annual mandatory education required by an employer as eligible for CEUs. The project I am undertaking is intended to replace a current mandatory competency related to a major patient safety issue that is evaluated by a 10-question online quiz, which considering the importance of the issue is far too little.

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

This is definitely the best thread we have had alllnurses for a long time. Kudos to everyone -- especially you, GrnTea

I think it is all just more evidence of how intellectually lazy American society has become. People don't respect science and choose to believe what they WANT to believe in spite of the evidence. ... Our young people are falling further behind those from other countries on standardized tests. ... Some journalists don't even try to be objective anymore and large segments of the population don't know that they SHOULD be checking sources, etc. We could all go on and on, but it is depressing.

It's all part of the same big picture of societal laziness and a lowering of standards. I hate to see it happening within nursing, but sadly, allnurses is guilty of it sometimes, too.

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Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Admin Team understands your concerns regarding research quality...we do turn down requests, however realize that there is a starting point to learn and grow from. Not everyone is getting A's, instructor grading still a big factor --lack of effort = lesser grade.

We do request to publish research results and have had some scholarly articles posted 4th quarter 2013.

All members are encouraged to submit articles, with quarterly contests. It's ironic that Joe just posted today our 2014 Winter Article Contest

Join us in our 2014 Winter Article Contest. The top 4 articles will win $150!

Nursing is positive. It affects everyone in a positive way. That is why we are looking for articles that promote positive attitudes, goals, and experiences. Articles can encompass daily work, education, study tips, technology, etc.

With this contest you can write about anything. However, the following articles will have priority. Any article that deals with the following (in any way/shape/form) will be given priority when selecting the Top 10:

  • Team
  • Hope
  • Improve
  • Learn
  • Together
  • Thank You
  • Believe
  • Love (Valentines Day around the corner)

I invite you to submit a scholarly article so members can learn from our most seasoned, master RNs.

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Unfortunately, I would not be able to meet this criterion, as my state does not recognize annual mandatory education required by an employer as eligible for CEUs. The project I am undertaking is intended to replace a current mandatory competency related to a major patient safety issue that is evaluated by a 10-question online quiz, which considering the importance of the issue is far too little.

I think you mean that your current competency is (not so well) eval'd by the 10-question online quiz, and you want to do something better. I've seen projects where they set up booths in a big conference room or cafeteria and staff them to do education and checkoffs for what might be new skills, like IO starts, port access, wound VAC, and the more prosaic fire safety policy, med safety, documentation, basic arrhythmias and lead placement, etc. You could set some of them up as self-learning stations all around the hospital and do them like a scavenger hunt over a week. Maybe each department could offer one for its specialty as a teaser. Keep the mandatory ones open all day and evening on a few days to allow all staff to attend, attendance is paid time. It's a huge project but you can involve others in the planning and work (that's a good objective for your own project) and people really loved it. Participation as an instructor or evaluator can earn points on a clinical ladder.

(And I forgot to add that there are a lot of nursing specialty orgs whose certification boards will approve CEUs, like the rehab nurses, critical care nurses, IV nurses, case management nurses... many accept content that is related, such as to a particular medical diagnosis or set of medical diagnoses, and you could advertise to the community.)

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Admin Team understands your concerns regarding research quality...we do turn down requests, however realize that there is a starting point to learn and grow from. Not everyone is getting A's, instructor grading still a big factor --lack of effort = lesser grade.

We do request to publish research results and have had some scholarly articles posted 4th quarter 2013.

I think we all understand that for an individual learner there's always a starting point. We've all been there. However, my cavil is aimed at the products of "master's" level programs. These ought not to be learners who are naive to research; if they haven't done it yet and these are their first attempts, they ought to at least show evidence that they have learned something about it. This has nothing to do with getting As. It has to do with, well, competence. I'd be happy with a valid study done by someone with any GPA. Unfortunately, the fault lies largely in the faculties. Grades for effort doesn't seem to apply here either; these effortless proposals are being approved by faculty.

We understand that learners have to do what their faculties require. However, what sort of message would it send to those faculties if AN's institutional review board (for lack of a better term, and you ought to have or have access to people qualified to serve on one) really served the purpose of giving feedback to their student applicants? What if AN started saying to these applicants presenting (I can't think of a better term, sorry) bogus "research" plans that they don't meet standard for basic research because of a, b, and c, and encouraging them to go back to their faculties for assistance in amending the flaws in the proposals to make them more valid?

(If (OK, let's be clear on the major offender) students stop taking this appallingly easy out and stop coming here, especially if they learn WHY, I don't think that would be much of a loss to AN in particular and nursing in general. Some may produce decent research anyway, hooray for them! The others will choose to find a better way to do it or find somewhere else to do it as it stands. So what if they leave? Do we want to have actual standards or what? Does AN want to seek a better reputation? Think about that seriously.)

THEN we'd have something, and be doing something proactive to really influence the practice of nursing. This could result in better research. Even if that's an agonizingly slow process, as I am sure it would be, at very least a stronger review process would give online readers (especially students, but practicing nurses too) better exemplars of nursing research so they have more reason to respect the evidence-based practice that produces it. We all know how many people see nursing research...and I submit that it's because a lot of people can suss out nonsense when they see so much of it.

This need is not met by posting "articles." And if you mean by posting academic articles that AN posts the results of these programs, those don't count. If you mean more members posting their real research here, well, many, many of us are not in a position to perform research in our practices. We are not unreasonable to rely on actual academia to do the heavy lifting on that. AN should not encourage this lightweight fluff by dignifying it with the title of "academic research."

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We do request to publish research results and have had some scholarly articles posted 4th quarter 2013.

What is the AN definition of "scholarly"? I've yet to see anything truly peer-reviewed posted on AN.

Do these articles meet any of the criteria of a scholarly article:

STL:Â How to Identify a Scholarly Article

I have trouble believing that any other website representing the medical/allied health field would request submissions on "love" and consider them "articles." But I guess if I do an allnurses.com survey of 10 random internet people I could "publish" it here on AN as a "scholarly article" and add it to my CV.

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I never thought of the "articles" as scholarly. I think of them in the same way as entertainment "articles." I classify my time on AN as entertainment or social time. It isn't scholarly time. I guess I never checked any of these surveys for a class out. I don't believe I realized they were being done for an upper division project! I think I thought they were for some sort of career exploration or something.

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If intended to be mere entertainment, why is AN providing an APA citation for them? Obviously AN thinks they are somehow worthy of citation...

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Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
If intended to be mere entertainment, why is AN providing an APA citation for them? Obviously AN thinks they are somehow worthy of citation...

I wondered that as well. They couldn't be used in a paper, so there really is no reason to do that. Also, I've never seen an article cite itself; a brief bio of the author, yes, but not an APA citation. A scholarly article should also be free from misspellings and grammatical errors.

I consider the articles here to be much like opinion pieces or "infotainment." I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just that there's a difference between an article here v. an article in a professional nursing journal.

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Specializes in Programming / Strategist for allnurses.

thank you ... we appreciate the feedback

keep in mind...

1) We never call articles 'scholarly'. We provide information. Many topics will not interest you but that doesn't say that it's not important to someone else.

2) What APA citation? We removed that months ago.

3) We've been waiting for YOUR scholarly article.

4) allnurses is whatever you want it to be. It is something to everyone. What is it to you?

5) Research request? It's available for those who need it. You don't have to reply to them. You don't have to participate. Just know that people do participate in them.

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1) There was a reference to scholarly articles posted here by a previous poster; perhaps they are reprints from real journals with standards for "scholarly." I am very sorry to have missed them. Could we see a link?

2) If no APA or other recognized academic formatting for references, no fair calling it "scholarly." :)

3) We're waiting for genuine scholarship, and as noted, it's not unreasonable to hope to see it coming from academia, since most of us are not in practice areas where research is a possibility open to us and therefore we will not be publishing research papers. That's the purpose of academe, to lead knowledge. AN could be a leader in nursing in this very vital professional area. :w00t:

4) Infotainment might sum it up, even though many people take a lot of what they read here seriously ... but it could be so much more, if only in just one good forum. Thanks for asking: that's what I want to see here. Can I get an "Amen"? :yelclap:

5) As above; most of this does not qualify as "research." :bookworm: Whether people participate in them is up to them, of course; people do online polls all over the net on all sorts of foolishness. We just regret that AN chooses to dignify this by calling it "academic research" when it so rarely meets minimal criteria for that, and wish it could reconsider.

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
Although, I think we do have enough of a sample size from every single new grad posting "Does the PVT really work?" to have scientifically validated that the PVT does in fact work. Perhaps someone should write a scholarly article on that.

I think this paragraph needs a beverage alert! Off to get the paper towels to clean my monitor.

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