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Qualitative Critical Appraisal, Attitudes Knowledge and Skills Needed in Mental Health Nursing

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I have chosen to critique Rydon’s (2005) article ‘The attitudes, knowledge and skills needed in mental health nurses: The perspective of users of mental health services’ because I am interested in finding out service user’s outlook of mental health nurses. When I qualify as a mental health nurse I would need to acquire the correct attitudes, knowledge and skills as this would make the nursing process more effective, because as McCabe and Timmons (2006) suggest I will be more sensitive to the client’s needs and preferences. Therefore being able to transfer findings to my own practice is highly substantial. The Author of the article, Sharon E. Rydon, has undertaken this research as a partial fulfilment of a Master’s degree, training to be …show more content…

In consequence of that, differences may have influenced the outcomes of the results and bias may have formed (Parahoo, 2006). This type of bias is called selection biases. Some research bias is inevitable but the researcher should have shown their understanding of this and taken this into account in the data analysis. Therefore it also clearly indicates the researcher has failed to maintain consistency in the article and because of the errors the validity of the article has also been threatened. Further clarification is needed to understand what she actually did (Whittaker & Willamson, 2011, Parahoo, 2006, Litwin, 1995). It is imperative for a study to be valid, for the results to be accurately applied and interpreted. From this article it is difficult to say whether the study reflects the truth. Insufficient information on how the participants were selected; how participants got involved in the study; what questions were asked; whether or not the researcher’s body language and style of questioning influenced the results; and how trust was gained with participants leaves the reader questioning the validity of the article (Litwin, 1995, Merriam, 2009). The researcher “drew on the experience of 21 participants” although a small sample it is adequate to gaining rich data (Moule & Goodman, 2009), But “focus groups lasting approximately 1

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