Question :
This unit relates to critical appraisal on exploring resilience and preventive factors for psychological distress burnout among the human professions
- Critical appraisal of the research paper based on particular health scenario on the basis of authors expertise, qualifications and affiliations along with possible conflicts of interests
- Presentation of research study questions and the justification provided by researcher in respect to importance of study?
- What is the research design and ascertainment of appropriateness in respect to research questions?
- Strengths and limitations of research methods used by researcher for collecting data and studying participants. Also, reliability of results in context of research questions?
Answer :
INTRODUCTION
Human service professionals continuously work for welfare of people those who are not getting support from society and family. In the recent time, people are suffering from burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Mindfulness is the major psychological factor that can help in managing stress of human service professionals (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen and King, 2016, PP. 631-637). Present study will critically analyse the article “Exploring resilience and mindfulness as preventative factors for psychological distress burnout and secondary traumatic stress among human service professionals”. It will explain strength and weakness of the study. Furthermore, it will discuss factors that influence use of evidence in practice.
PART A
Authorship
Rachel Harker has appropriate knowledge about this field, she has completed her Masters of Psychology from recognised university. She is working as professional clinical psychologist. She is clinical psychologist at head space Camperdown. Aileen M. Pidgeon is Assistant Professor and faculty of Society and Design in Bond University. She teaches psychotherapies and psychopathology. She has completed her Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology from University of Queensland (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen and King, 2016, PP. 631-637). Frances Klaassen is another author of this research paper. She provides counselling at Mercy community services SEQ Ltd. Researchers are qualified enough and have relevant experience of long years in the psychological field. Thus, authors have implemented their experience for conducting research on the topic in effective manner.
All these authors are associated with the academic institutions. Thus, NSF has provided funds for conducting this study. They are affiliated with the recognised universities.
Authors are carrying out the research on their interest field. The main conflict of interest in this study was time (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen and King, 2016, PP. 631-637). Authors were having limited period of time, psychology is the vast field and in such short duration, it is very difficult to complete this research. Retaining outside funding was another conflict of interest in this research paper.
The article was published on 7th August 2015. Findings of this study are relevant with the research objectives.
Research questions
Aim of this study was to develop understanding regarding relationship between resilience, mindfulness, burnout, secondary traumatic stress and psychological distress among human service professionals (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen and King, 2016, PP. 631-637).
Research questions of this paper are to identify relationship between resilience, mindfulness and secondary traumatic stress. Another research question of this article is to find out impact of these elements of health service professionals.
For carrying out this study in effective manner researcher has hypothesised high level of mindfulness and resilience to significantly predict level of burnout and stress.
In order to complete this study, scholars have described concepts of mindfulness, burnout and secondary traumatic stress. Relationship between all these variables has been described in this article (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen and King, 2016, PP. 631-637).
Background of this research paper explains that human service professional those who provide intervention to vulnerable people are routinely unproductive towards their work. It is very important to promote psychological well-being and implement service standards so that stress level can be minimised.
The gap in this study was warrant consideration. As the result of the study shows that resilience is unique variance that can help in minimising stress but it has failed to explain whether human service professionals those who have reported low level stress do as a result of high level resilience.
The study was needed because stress and emotional issues in the lives of human service professionals have been increased to great extent. In such condition, they are unable to concentrate more on vulnerable people. This impacts on well-being of these people. If stress level of human service professional have been minimised, then they would be able to provide quality care to these people (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen and King, 2016, PP. 631-637). Thus, this study was needed for balancing life of professionals and resolving their psychological stress.
Research design
It is the primary study, scholar has involved human participants those who have knowledge about this field and can share their views in order to identify factors of preventing professional from stress. With the assistance of primary resources, researchers have become able to gather first-hand information and real facts about topic.
Author has applied cross sectional correlational design. This design has helped the investigator in analysing data from population (Morse, 2015, pp 1212-1222). In this design, researcher has to employ many demographic variables such as age, gender, income etc. It has helped in proving or disproving assumptions. This design has supported in capturing specific point in time. Outcome of the research are helpful in creating new theory.
Cross sectional correlational design is suitable to answer the research questions. It is cost effective design and can be performed easily. In this design, data can be used for various research types (Bryman, 2016).
Research methods
In order to complete this research in an effective manner, researchers have applied various methods. Individuals have used deductive research approach. This has supported in formulating hypotheses and testing these hypotheses. Furthermore, it has applied quantitative research method. This quantitative method has supported in involving statistical calculations in order to find out level of impact of mindfulness on stress among health service professionals. Involvement of correlational analysis, hierarchical analysis tests have been applied in this research so that valid output can be generated (Denzin and Giardina, 2016, pp. 9-38).
Researchers have involved 133 human service professionals those who have great experience in this field. Involvement of these human respondents is appropriate. They have relevant experience in psychological field thus, they can give in-depth detail about the topic.
Results and findings
From the research, it is found that resilience and mindfulness are two major variables that can support in dealing with stress, burnout, traumatic stress etc. Both these variables contribute well in reducing negative psychological outcomes. By this way, health service professional can feel relax and they can concentrate more on their duties. This helps in minimising their emotional issues and giving them strength so that they can provide quality care to the vulnerable people in society.
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PART B
Barriers to the application
There are various barriers for the application of evidence in practice. Major barriers are size and complexity of research. Human psychology is the vast topic and it is very complicated too. In such type of topic, scholar has to pay extra attention on data collection. Individual needs to involve such details that can support in answering research questions. Another barrier to this study was poor access to the evidence. There are many sites that require access permission from concern people (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen and King, 2016, PP. 631-637). But authors were not having access of some sites which has created issue for the researcher in conducting research. It is the topic on which fewer researchers have conducted their studies. Thus, there are limited data available. In such condition, scholars were required to utilise their studies and experience in an effective manner so that research questions can be answered appropriately. The research is based on individual clinical expertise. Researcher had to involve such participants those who have experience of this field. It was complicated to involve such people in the study because they are highly professional and do not disclose information with any person (Harker, Pidgeon, Klaassen and King, 2016, PP. 631-637). Lack of guidelines was another barrier to this research.
CONCLUSION
From the above study, it can be articulated that critical analysis of any article is considered as the most complex task. For analysing this article, scholar has to look at the methods applied in this study and strength and weakness of these tools. In the present study, quantitative method has been applied. This has helped in finding accurate results and answering research questions. Moreover, it has been concluded that resilience and mindfulness are two major variables that can support in resolving stress of human service professionals.
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