Dissertation/Thesis

The question is,what do you know about? It's better to do something that interests you and something you know about.

I always wanted to see a research project done on how many people come to the ER with CC of abdominal pain and what percentage go out with a diagnosis of something other than abdominal pain.

I bet half of our patients complain of belly pain. On females, we do UA/ UPT, routine labs, pelvic exam, ultrasounds (pelvic and gallbladder), CT abdomen with oral and IV contrast and of course lots of meds for nausea and pain and IV fluids. Thousands of dollars and 6 hours later most go home.....generally nothing shows up.

Men get less tests, and nothing shows up. Everyone goes home with an RX for vicodin and zofran and a FU to their PCP.

I'm not interested enough to do the research myself, but if you do it, let us know what you find!

I would like to see some research on whether patients would actually prefer visiting hours to the free-for-all that goes on in hospitals today. Ooops---you can tell I am biased! But we all act like we "know" that patients want open visitation, but some have told me privately that it wears them out and makes them sicker, especially if the visitors actually belong to their room-mates.

I just wrote a literature review on the subcutlure of healthcare: nurse-physician relationship. Pretty interesting if you're up for it.

Just to clarify...

A thesis is a master's level research project. Usually consisting of the 5 standard chapters, but can use a simple methodology and design.

A dissertation is a doctoral level research project that also uses the standard 5 chapter design (intro, lit review, methodology, findings and conclusions). Your committee members usually won't approve simple designs and methodologies, or topics that have been ascertained in the past, as you should be able to design higher level projects and utilize higher level statistics.

If you are in a program leading to RN licensure, the correct term for a capstone project would be a research project, and would avoid reference to a thesis or dissertation.