Literature Search & Review

The PCIE unit/department is the neuroscience care unit. The identified target for improvement is delay in lab results.

By this point, you should have identified an area where improvement is needed in the PCIE environment. For instance, maybe you’ve discovered that there were some inpatient geriatric patient falls recently You’ll now need to review the literature to see what you can discover about this topic. Remember, your focus IS NOT on how to fix this problem at this point, but instead just to find out what is happening currently, nation-wide, in regards to the topic.

Perform a search for five nursing research articles related to the target for improvement you’ve identified (contact your Assigned Clinical Faculty if you have not yet discovered two options for the target for improvement). Remember that a nursing research article should meet all of the following criteria:

• In a peer-reviewed nursing journal or written by a nurse and focusing on nursing care regarding the topic
• Discuss a research study that has been performed by the authors (primary research)
• Have been published within the last 5 years (we’ll accept 2020 or more recent)
• We will also accept one current clinical guideline as one of the five required articles

As you perform your literature search, you may need to narrow down the focus of the literature. For example, you may need to find articles that relate to the patient population, such as geriatric patients, or a particular health care environment, such as inpatient.

Once you’ve located such articles, read them, and complete the Review of Literature and Data Form, which is submitted in this module.