Need Advice Regarding Research Design

[nike0777]

Hello,

I am in a graduate nursing research course and have a question regarding experimental vs quasiexperimental designs for my proposal. My group looked at the topic that nurses lack of research knowledge is a barrier to utilizing EBP and it's effect on the rate of CAUTIs. For our research question we made it more specific and suggested an intervention for increasing education to decrease CAUTIs.

In our proposal our question was "will implementing mandatory research article critiques decrease the incidence of CAUTIs on a unit".

So I am not sure if I'm understanding the methodology part and would appreciate any feedback from the experts :)

This is how I was thinking of how to complete the study. In a nursing unit, half of the staff would receive the critiques as education and half of the staff would not. Patients would randomly be assigned to either one of those groups. At the end of 6 months, the rate of CAUTIs would be compared between the two groups to determine if the group that received education had a lower incidence of CAUTIs. So this would be done as a RCT with Post Test only?? Is that correct?

Does anyone have a suggestion as to something different that would be more realistic or work better?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[nike0777]

Sorry, I also meant to ask how this study would be looked at as far as single blinded. Would the patient be considered blinded since they wouldn't know which group they were assigned? I'm not sure how that would effect this study since knowing if they were or weren't in the group of educated nurses wouldn't effect the development of a CAUTI.