Research Versus Practice

Research vs Practice
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Institutional affiliations
Research vs. Practice
“Challenges faced by nurses in managing pain in a critical care setting” by Subramanian, P., Allcock, N., James, V., & Lathlean, J.(2011) is a research article because it clearly identifies its research problem which aims at studying the challenges of pain management in critical care centers. It then follows systematic steps typical of those employed in research such as collecting raw data from a sample, analyzing the data to get findings and also giving conclusions. Below I provide a brief summary of the activities in each of the research activities identified above.
A sample size of 21 nurses who had rich experience in the field was purposively drawn. Such nurses were required to have experience of more than 25 years in the field. Out of the participant’s responses, the research found out that the main challenges that nurses face in efficient pain management are a lack of proper clinical guidelines, the condition of the patient, lack of standardized tools to assess the conditions of patients and lack of autonomous decision-making processes.
The article “Assessing abdominal pain through history taking and physical examination” by Apau Daniel (2010) is a practice paper because it lays more emphasis on the methodologies that can be employed to solve a problem as it can be illustrated below.
The article begins by providing insight on how to determine the threshold of pain which according to the author is determined by the receptor types involved, the stimuli nature and also the organization of the pain pathways starting from the injury site to the central nervous system.

In regard to pain assessment, the author notes that the identification of multisource pain poses difficulties to practitioners but also adds that having a good understanding of the knowledge of the pain transmission patterns such as Somatoparietal pain and visceral pain, which comprises of tension pain, Ischemic pain and inflammatory pain, can provide a solution to the challenge. Additionally, timely testing and evaluation of the patient using methods such as inspection, palpation, and auscultation should be done for accurate and efficient diagnosis of the pain.
The papers differ in the sense that one generally focuses on the challenges that nurse’s face in regard to the management of pain in patients without trying to understand the specific types of pain that patients face. The other provides an in-depth look at how the stimuli is conducted in the abdominal cavity, explores the various types of pain and provides a way of evaluating the pain in patients. In other words, the article “Assessing abdominal pain through history taking and physical examination” seeks to provide solutions to some of the challenges that the article “Challenges faced by nurses in managing pain in a critical care setting” explores.
The article “Assessing abdominal pain through history taking and physical examination” can be used in training of nurses and doctors in hospitals so that they can get a deeper insight of the types of pain, why they need to do a timely evaluation and how they can be able to troubleshoot the pain. The article “Challenges faced by nurses in managing pain in a critical care setting” on the other hand can be used by policy makers or research intuitions so that researchers can be able to come up different ways of training the nurses. The assessment tools can be employed to give doctors and nurses proposals on the kind of policies and regulations that can effectively and accurately manage pain
GRAPHIC ORGANIZER.
3244215185420Types of pain
00Types of pain
260252344743
4536832120162001723291849910037367312168760032355816412200 Tension pain
-38744824066402523392346319
147710838593300349257620Visceral pain
00Visceral pain
30416507620Training
00Training

9847372173800355209292075005187315285115Somatoparietal and referred pain
00Somatoparietal and referred pain
right16207106499973052900
Inflammatory pain Ischemic pain
3121025180975How to evaluate
00How to evaluate
2461846228600
142435424799300Inflammatory pain
302455515635700348991023548700381586219152600
Inspection
Using assessment tools percussion palpation
References
Apau, D. (2010). Assessing abdominal pain through history taking and physical examination. Gastrointestinal Nursing, 8(7), 50-53.
Subramanian, P., Allcock, N., James, V., & Lathlean, J. (2011). Challenges faced by nurses in managing pain in a critical care setting. Journal Of Clinical Nursing, 21(9-10), 1254-1262.