Step 0: Cultivate a spirit of inquiry – choosing a topic – My team and I wanted to choose a topic that would interest all of us, along with building our knowledge on a new topic. The hardest part was thinking about so many topics and trying to narrow down the selection or finding one that really sparked inspiration in us. We all came to the conclusion that it would be beneficial to learn more about medical marijuana as its being legal in many states and has been shown to help a lot of medical problems. We then remembered that there had seen a few videos where people with Parkinson’s disease would take medical marijuana, and a lot of their symptoms calmed down. I was extremely happy that we were able to find a topic that interested everyone.
Step 1: Ask the burning clinical question in PICOT format – We started out with an idea of what we wanted to say, but the wording of the PICOT question was definitely the hardest part. We wanted to make sure it was asking what we intended, along with not being bias or using any biased words. For our PICOT question, we came up with, In patients with Parkinson’s how does the use of medical marijuana compare with standard medical treatment impact Parkinson’s symptoms? We were proud of our final PICOT question, and we were able to find some good articles that supported our question.
Step 2: Search for and collect the most relevant evidence – finding articles – Finding good articles was difficult for my group. We had to do a lot of deep dives and plug in different words to find articles that would relate to what we were searching for. When I was looking for articles I kept finding a lot of articles that were great and provided great information but weren’t scholarly. We ended being able to find three great scholarly articles that met all the criteria and they were all extremely helpful. We then used one non-scholarly article as well to help define a few topics.
Step 3a: Critically appraise the evidence – Part I (rapid critical appraisal) I found that this step felt tedious at the moment but was extremely helpful in the future when I needed all of that information. Having had all 3 critical appraisals really helped us as we were able to make sure that they were scholarly and that the research in each would benefit our research paper.
Step 3b: Critically appraise the evidence – Part II (evidence table & annotated bibliography)- I personally feel like this was the hardest part of writing the paper. I think it was so troublesome because we had never done anything like this so it was out of our comfort zones. I also think that in our rough drafts we didn’t take it as seriously and it required us to make a lot of changes. It was extremely helpful getting corrections on what to change, but I still struggled some. Now I have a stronger understanding of what to put into an evidence table and annotated bibliography, and I feel I would be able to do it again.
Step 3c: Critically appraise the evidence – Part III (synthesis – writing the paper) – With all the preparation that we had done in advance, writing the paper was probably the easiest part as we were able to just combine everything together. Even though it was the easiest part it still came with some difficulties. We were able to get all of the information down, but a lot of times weren’t concise enough, or we were adding unnecessary information. It was also clear that we had split up the paper to write, as we all had a different writing style. After our paper got revised we received a large number of corrections and comments on things that we needed to fix. These comments were extremely helpful and applied. Our group made the mistake of not fully opening the revised copy, and that caused us to miss a few comments therefore we didn’t apply them to our final paper. It was frustrating that we tried extremely hard but made the small mistake of not opening the document all the way, which left us with points getting taken off. In the end, I’m proud of all the hard work we put in, and how the paper turned out.
Final Reflection: As you can see my group and I ran into many struggles but most importantly we were able to overcome all of them. This class was hard, as we were learning to do something completely new. This class taught me to think in new ways and helped me learn how to gather my thoughts and ideas and organize them. Most importantly this class has taught me how important research is and how I can use research to my advantage while being a nurse. I now have the ability to take what I have learned and apply it in any healthcare setting that works in. I will be able to provide the best care to my patients and be an advocate for improvement. Overall this class has helped me get one step closer to being an amazing nurse.
Influence Paper:
