Getting to the heart of the matter
Working at the bedside of seriously ill, intubated patients is all in a day’s work for Erin Tang. As a nurse in the VGH Cardiac Sciences ICU, she’s become accustomed to interpreting patients’ hand gestures to respond to their needs. Whether patients can understand what she’s saying is an entirely different matter.
“It’s easy to forget and just assume that our patients speak English.” says Erin, “In a diverse, multicultural city like Vancouver, I’ve found that’s often not the case.”
The implications for patients can’t be taken lightly either, says Erin.
Take coronary bypass surgery patients. “They need to take an active role in their recovery,” she explains. “It’s vital for them to perform breathing exercises to expand their lungs after surgery, and they need to get out of bed and walk the day after surgery to avoid contracting pneumonia and infections.”
But, what if the patient can’t follow your instructions? Or perhaps doesn’t understand just how important these exercises really are? Is the patient’s hospital stay prolonged as a result?
Erin isn’t the only nurse troubled by these questions. Her colleagues Andrea Kwok, Bonnie Leung and Jeremy Go want to get to the heart of the matter as well. And, so, they applied for and succeeded in securing a $5,000 VCH Research Challenge grant funded by our VGH and UBC Hospital Foundation.
Walking in blind not a problem
The VCH Research Challenge is designed for budding researchers just like Erin and her friends. The program targets point-of-care nursing and allied health staff who may never have conducted research before, but who have questions and observations based on their daily experiences.
“We knew we were asking an important question,” says Erin, “but we were walking in blind. There’s a lot involved in research that we didn’t realize,” she admits with a chuckle.
And that’s why a mentor is assigned to every Research Challenge team. Priscilla Taipale, an Emergency Department RN and a student pursuing her Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing, is passionate about research and happy to serve as this team’s mentor.
“Their keen and motivated, and I’m really excited that the team’s research is examining longer term outcomes, and from a culturally sensitive perspective,” she says.
With Priscilla’s support, Erin and her colleagues conducted a literature review to formulate their research question and proposal, applied for the grant and took their proposal through ethics approval.
The learning goes both ways, too. “We brainstorm together,” explains Priscilla, “and the team’s pushing my learning and thinking in the process.”
Research results in the fall
Over the summer, our first-time researchers will collect their data, screening 700 charts and comparing English language proficiency with hospital length of stay. The team aims to present results at nursing rounds in the fall.
“It’s exciting and we look forward to the challenge,” says Erin. “In preparing our proposal we learned just how little is known about language proficiency, especially in relation to our population.
“It just goes to show that bedside nurses can contribute a lot. It takes money and time, and the Research Challenge grant has provided us both so we can make a contribution.”
For more on the VCH Research Challenge and a full list of the 2013 award recipients, read our earlier VCH News story.