Nursing Research Topics! Any Ideas?

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Hi all. I am a student nurse.

For my assignment, I have to write an essay based on evidence practice nursing. I am struggling to find a topic. I am thinking about: risk assessment tools to predict pressure sores. However, I am not finding different types of level of the hierarchy of evidence.

I want a topic where I would be able to find different types evidence such as systematic review, a qualitative or quantitative study or an expert opinion on the topics.

What topics would you think is interested for me to use?

Thanks in advance.

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Specializes in Ante-Intra-Postpartum, Post Gyne.
judieli said:
Hi all. I am student nurse. For my assignment I have to write an essay based on evidence practice nursing. I am struggling to find a topic. I am thinking about: risk assessment tools to predict pressure sores.however, i am not finding different types of level of hierarchy of evidence. I want a topic where I would be able to find different types evidence such as systematic review,a qualitative or quantitative study or an expert opinion on the topics. Please what topics would you think is interested for me to use. I need an interesting ones.

Thanks in advance

Research papers are hard, a lot of work if you do it right. My research paper was over 20 pages; do it on something you are interested in or it is going to be h*ll

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

The key to this assignment is to do something that shows you understand and are capable of the process - not to solve world hunger. Make sure you pick a topic with plenty of research behind it. Pretty much any of the major research clearinghouses (Nursing Consult, EBSCO's PERC, MD Consult, etc.) will have articles ranked by levels of evidence. Just about every hospital subscribes to one of these sites. If you don't have access to one, see if the hospital where you do clinicals will let you access theirs.

Then, pick a topic that you are familiar with but want to know more about. Avoid 'cutting edge' stuff that doesn't have a lot of literature yet. In the case of pressure sores, you would want to look at treatment options, not assessment techniques - there is a lot of literature. Another great topic is small bore NG tube placement. Anything related to current 'core measures' is also good -- tons of literature. This includes catheter-related infections, prevention of pneumonia among ventilator-assisted patients. . .

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Specializes in LTC, Psych, Hospice.

There are also many nursing journals you should be able to access from your school library. I like Cinahl, Medline, Cochrane. You will be able to enter your search parameters. As the others stated, make it a topic you are interested in, otherwise you'll put off the research and the actual writing. Good luck.

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Specializes in Intermediate care.

I did my senior research project on therapeutic hypothermia for patients after cardiac arrest. As in, is it an effective treatment option in preventing neurological damage or decrease the mortality??

There was a lot out there on it.

Another one i did was patients on ventilators, getting them up and walking to prevent pneumonia.

You can do something on NCLEX. Such as passing rates when students take an NCLEX preparation course vs not taking an NCLEX preparation course.

Lots out there, just find something that interests you, or something you have seen in clinicals.

If you like pressure sores and wounds, you could do something like the use of Honey in treatment of sores.

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Maggot therapy...

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We had to do one every semester in my program for clinicals. I did one on pressure ulcer prevention once. I actually found a quantitative article on preventative measures. It was evaluating the effectiveness of the Braden scale. Search for it on medline. Does your school have a subscription to any medical databases like this? Check with the library and they might have a free subscription for you to use. That's how I did all of my research. I did another EBP paper on alternative pain management and it was an article on the use of pet therapy in pediatric patients. I've seen other papers on pain management in burn patients too....it was a pretty net article they used.

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I researched workplace work-arounds...I know it sounds vague. However, most of the hospitals in my area utilized barcode scanning systems to administer all of their medications and I was interested in finding out how creative the nurses were in bypassing the "rules" in order to administer the medications. For example: did the nurses scan every single barcode label of EVERY med? Did the nurses drag the laptop with cart into each patient's room every single time they administered a med? I interviewed the hospital's primary nursing informatics specialist who was able to share with me tons of statistics and data. I also found lots of data through Cinahl, Ebsco, etc. That paper was an easy A...good luck!

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Music therapy after surgery.

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Specializes in Medical.

That sounds fascinating, Selene006 - any chance you could post it in the essays section here? I'd never thought of this as a topic but am now really interested (and know that looking it up myself would just be procrastination from the paper I'm supposed to be writing right now!)

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judieli said:
Hi all. I am student nurse. For my assignment I have to write an essay based on evidence practice nursing. I am struggling to find a topic. I am thinking about: risk assessment tools to predict pressure sores.however, i am not finding different types of level of hierarchy of evidence. I want a topic where I would be able to find different types evidence such as systematic review,a qualitative or quantitative study or an expert opinion on the topics. Please what topics would you think is interested for me to use. I need an interesting ones.

Thanks in advance

I have realized that I did not specify it. I am not requested to do a research, it is an evidence based practice essay that I am asked to do. the essay comprises of choosing a topic of aspect of care then find different types of evidence of that care related to the level of hierarchy of evidence that you can find and say what types of evidence they are.

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Specializes in Trauma/Critical Care.

Hi there,

Everything we do as nurses is based on evidence-based research...so, pretty much any practice you choose for your project, will be backed up by research. I work in critical care and a practice (which is inspired by evidence-based research) that is gaining momentum around the hospitals in my area, is allowing families at bedside 24/7 (open door policy) in the ICU's. You will find many studies supporting the "benefits" of this practice.

Going back to basic, a practice that has been changed by evidence-based research is the use of x-ray to confirm NGT placements...in the past, auscultation was all we needed...that changed thanks to evidence-based research.

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