The purpose of this influence paper is to examine the PICOT question, “What effect does prenatal alcohol consumption have on the cognitive function of school aged children?” Although more research should be done to further explore this issue, information from various articles supported a positive correlation between prenatal alcohol consumption and cognitive deficits in school aged children. This leads to the need for evidence based education to pregnant women about the potential negative effects that prenatal alcohol consumption could have on their children.
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With this research essay, I realized what it meant to use evidence-based practice in practice. It does not mean just looking at a research study and using that to influence practice. There is a lot more that goes into using evidence based practice. In order for evidence based practice to be used in practice, there is a lot of work that must be done prior to it. The research studies must be verified as reliable and there should be at least 3 articles to back up the hypothesis. I feel that through this process, I learned how to be a leader in research, while also working collaboratively with a team. Through working with a team, I will move forward working with individuals who are motivated and passionate about the research that they are performing. Moving forward, I will appreciate and understand the value of evidence based practice significantly more than I did before. I am aware of how important it is in order to make change for the better. I will bring the skills learned during this research with me as I progress in my nursing career. I am excited that I have shifted to more of an evidence based mindset in terms of nursing because it has already opened my eyes to the importance of research and allows me to care for my patients the best way possible.
After finishing the ethical conduct of research assignments and watching “Miss Ever’s Boys”, I feel that I understand the role of nurses in ethics a bit better. The movie really provided me with a good understanding of the infamous “Tuskegee Study” and how it helped evolve ethical principles. Nurse Eunice Evers was invited to work with doctors in a study to treat syphillis patients in Alabama. The study’s participants consisted of poor black men. It ended up turning into a twisted experiment where the patient’s are not even receiving treatment and are unaware of it. They are refused the right to get a Penicillin shot which was proven to be effective in treating syphillis during the duration of the study. Nurse Ever’s broke the nursing Code of Conduct by changing the study from the initial agreement without the participant’s knowledge and not offering a way out. This study ended with multiple deaths of participants which could have been prevented if Nurse Ever’s spoke up about what the study was actually doing. With that being said, nurses have an extremely important role in research studies because they have a responsibility to make sure that the patients are informed of all aspects of the study. It is important that we understand how ethical principles have evolved over time and why they have changed. With all the ethical practice and watching “Miss Ever’s Boys”, I now understand why ethics is so essential in nursing research and how it can affect our patients’. It is something that I will keep in mind when participating in research studies and treating patients as a future nurse.
Through evidence appraisal and synthesis, I was able to evaluate my study with a deeper look. The article investigated whether a meconium alcohol metabolite (ethyl glucuronide, EtG) was associated with cognitive development, ADHD-related behavior and neurophysiological markers of attention and executive control of children at primary-school age. Evidence from the study supported our PICOT question that prenatal alcohol consumptions will have an effect on cognitive function of school aged children. Findings included the groups with higher EtG levels has lower IQ scores than the other groups and a positive correlation between higher EtG levels and ADHD related behaviors. The evidence from this study supports my assumptions that I had when beginning this research. This article and its findings can be used in my future nursing practice. Although, I am unsure as to what specialty of nursing that I would like to go in, I do have interest in labor and delivery. With this information, I can provide evidence-based education to my patients regarding alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Having evidence to back up my education would help to show reliability and establish a trusting relationship with the patient.
My group members and I all arrived to the same conclusions with our articles that support the idea the prenatal alcohol consumptions will have an effect on cognitive function of school aged children. The collaboration process during this section was a bit rusty. My group consists of 5 people and only 4 of us were able to find articles that were approved use during this paper. To make the work more even, the group member without an article offered to help if needed. There was a miscommunication among the individual without the article and an individual whom she was helping with their appraisal which caused the critical appraisal for that article to not be submitted. We figured this out after the submission of the annotated bibliography. This was a careless error that was then smoothed over. It is definitely a wake up call to triple check everything and make a collaborative game plan from here on out so that something like this will not happen.
Since developing a PICOT question, my team and I have been smooth sailing. We agreed on a topic that we were all interest in. That topic is the effects of maternal alcohol consumption on learning disabilities in school aged children. As we began to look for articles, we had trouble finding them as out PICOT was a bit too broad. After discussing with each other and bouncing ideas off of our professor we decided to change our PICOT a bit, with it being more broad. Our new PICOT focused on the effects that prenatal alcohol consumption has on cognitive abilities in school aged children. With this slight change in our PICOT, my group has a lot more success in finding articles that were relevant to our research. Working together on this process and tackling the challenges together has helped us get a grasp of what we need to do for this paper. We have been dividing the work evenly and trusting each other. It is important that we keep an open line of communication with the whole group. With that being said, my group has created a group message text that we will use to talk about what we will each for the assignments. We will even sometimes do a group Facetime call or Zoom to talk about the content of the assignments to compare and discuss. I am lucky to be working with group and excited to get into the bulk of this project!
I see my team being able to collaborate to form an exceptional final paper. When beginning to choose a topic, I think it will take some time for each of us to research topics that could interest us. Once, we each find a couple of topics that we want to learn more about, we will then bounce the ideas off each other. The key to agreeing on a topic is open mindedness of all team members. This will have to carry over throughout the whole paper. Everyone should be open to hearing the ideas of others, while also being accountable for their assigned part.
The communication plan will begin right from the start. This communication is essential to build a good foundation for our paper. We will assign different parts of the paper to each team member. Although we will all have our own parts, we will be able to work as a team if someone needs help. I think that within the group we should have due dates for when we want certain parts done yet. It is also essential that we look at the sections of our other group members and give some feedback.
The plan for conflict management should simply be just addressing the situation. It should be addressed earlier rather than later so that it does not get worse and affect our grade. If we face the situation head on and go directly to the individual who is not putting in their best effort, then it will be easier to solve. Being able to address this situation both efficiently and respectfully, then the team is more apt to have a successful paper.
Although I do not anticipate any barriers with my team, one that could occur would be people of the group not doing their job and not responding to any critiques made my other team members. Another barrier could be the flow of the paper because we all have different writing techniques so it could create a choppy sounding paper. Benefits of working as a group is the amount of work that everyone would have to do would decrease. Also, it will be interesting to get different points of view and input from each person of the group.
This project will be useful in my future nursing practice. Collaborative work is the core of health care. In my practice, I will be a part of an interprofessional health care team. This team will consist of people who all have different roles, but their main goal is focused around the patient. Similarly, during this paper we will all have different parts of the project to do but our main goal is to create a scholarly essay for our final paper. The ability to work with others in critical in the nursing world, so working on this project with a team will help me practice doing that. I will take skills that I learn throughout creating the final paper with me throughout my nursing career.
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