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.
Category: Research
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.
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!
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