In this paper, I will be evaluating a literature review research paper that was published in a journal publication. The article titled “A literature review of the individual and system factors that contribute to medication errors in nursing practice” written by Brady et al (2009) is a form of a desk-based review paper that utilizes secondary sources to investigate the extent of medication errors issue in health facilities within the context of nursing practice. In this paper, the authors review the findings of various actual research studies (26 in number), that have previously investigated the phenomenon of medication errors, and which have been published in authoritative publications. In this paper, I will provide a critical analysis of the above-mentioned article from various perspectives.
Notable to mention is that this article utilizes a form of desk-based review that relies solely on secondary sources to investigate the issue of ‘medication errors’. The implication is that the final article has relied on secondary sources that were selected to advance and prove a certain hypothesis regarding the issue under investigation (in this case factors causing medication errors), without having to undertake primary research. As such, in this article, the authors utilize the literature review used to write the article in three major ways: (1) To formulate theories that the paper needs to advance to lay the groundwork of investigating the issues at hand. In this article, Brady et al (2009) have a section on the paper titled “Theoretical approach” whereby the theories of the study are summarized which discusses the major categories of factors that are attributed to medication errors.
Literature review has been used to develop themes through which specific factors that are attributed to medication errors are proposed. Finally, a literature review of sources by the authors in this article has served to prove the hypothesis of the study (which is not implicitly stated), as well as to validate the quality and authenticity of this article which is dependent on the sources used. Since all the sources used in the paper appear to be authoritative, the findings of this article consequently can be surmised to be similarly reliable.
As a general rule, every research-oriented study must incorporate very essential considerations of ethics that must be observed throughout the process of the research study. One such ethical issue to consider is referred to as confidentiality and privacy; in this case, the researcher puts in place measures that guarantee the privacy of respondent information that is given in confidence (Gilgun et al, 1997; Newman, 1994). Other ethical considerations have to do with the safety of study subjects or respondents. But since in this case primary sources of data collected from respondents were not utilized given that this is a form of desk-review study, there were no ethical issues that could have been encountered, and consequently no need for ethical considerations.
In any case, no interaction with any study subjects took place. Perhaps, a possible ethical consideration that is to be observed in some of the studies utilizing secondary resources is an objective presentation of various study findings by the authors for purposes of ensuring that the reader arrives at an objective conclusion. In this article, there is no evidence of possible bias by the authors in presenting the findings of secondary sources used in the paper. If anything, its presentations of findings from literature review of various sources appear to be highly objective.
This article is a form of qualitative study rather than a quantitative one, as such, throughout this paper, the authors of this study apply minimal if any statistical analysis. This is because of two obvious reasons: one, the study relies on a literature review of secondary sources that are mostly qualitative as its source of primary data; secondly, the nature and focus of this study “An investigation of the causes of medical errors”, is an issue that is largely subjective which implies that the best approach of researching it will be through a qualitative study (Brady et al, 2009). So to a large extent, this article relies on qualitative analysis but not a statistical analysis of literature review sources as it is evident in the various categories and types of factors that it identifies to be the major causes of medical errors in the nursing practice.
Nevertheless, the study still utilizes to a lesser extent statistical analysis in its discussions, but this is only limited to the summarization of the research findings highlighted in the actual research studies described in some of the
Order this paper