Senior Nursing Honors Project... Need Topic Advice

nurz2be · Aug 17, 2007

My personal opinion, regarding critical care, is "The science of touch." As so many patients can be in a coma, how important it is for them to receive physical touch and verbal touch. There are a lot of beliefs about whether they can actually hear, are they able to recall when they wake, how helpful are these types of touch to their recovery.

I mean imagine if you, God forbid, were in that state and if you could hear everything going on around you but you couldn't respond. What must that be like to be so far away but really so close. How would the recovery of lets say 2 patients be if one had the physical and emotional touches versus a patient that did not receive either.

Ok, I am gonna stop typing cause I might be here all day.

Good luck with your thesis.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Aug 17, 2007

there are a number of nursing journals devoted to critical care nursing. here are links to information about them. in some cases you can access articles for free online, but you are better off going through a library:

i would see if the library can get you recent issues of any of these and see what kind of subjects and issues they are addressing. in particular, look at the references and bibliographies of some of the articles because you need good references to back up what you are going to eventually end up writing about. when i did my senior project, i ended up writing to a nurse researcher and she sent me tons of information about her topic of study in the mail. we were told that many nurse researchers are glad to share their work with other nurses and students. i wouldn't choose a subject blindly; see what some of the critical care nurses are researching and decide on something that sounds interesting. follow and read the referenced articles that the researcher used for their literature search because you will need them in writing your paper as well.

VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN · Aug 19, 2007

I'm entering my senior year of nursing school and am going to do and honors research thesis. Only thing is, I'm having trouble deciding on a topic! I would like my topic to be in the realm of critical care. Does anyone have any topic advice? What are some interesting issues in critical care that a nursing student could explore effectively over the course of two semesters? Thanks so much in advance...

Two which come to mind (right off the top of my head):

Mandatory DNR or advance directives for clients 85 years old or above.

"Open visitation" in adult critical care units.