Research methodology for veterinary nurses
Abstract
The veterinary nursing profession has progressed towards autonomy and self regulation over the past decade and in April 2010 will have fully achieved this regulated, professional status, whereby its members must adhere to and maintain certain professional standards as stipulated by the awarding body. With these advances comes the need for veterinary nurses (VN) to take ownership of their nursing, responsibility for their actions and become truly accountable for their day-to-day activities in veterinary practice.
An inevitable part of this progression is the need for all VNs to source, read, understand and utilize the most current research available to justify their decisions based on best practice; evidence-based practice. With the introduction and development of a variety of higher education courses for the VN there has been an increase in the number of undergraduate and postgraduate VNs conducting research into many subject areas via different methods. This level of participation in research should hopefully continue into the future, building on the knowledgebase of evidence available for VNs.
This article initially explores what research actually means before moving on to veterinary nursing research and the issues surrounding this concept. The research process is explored before moving on to the basics about research methodology and methods a VN may consider when undertaking a research project in veterinary practice.
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, and a veterinary nurse's (VN) knowledge underpins all of their actions on a daily basis in practice. A VN is a source of knowledge for others, and as such must be accountable for the issues and topics she/he is acting as an authority on. Feldman (1998) explains that nursing knowledge comes from a variety of sources including trial and error, tradition, intuition and research. As the profession is becoming autonomous and self regulated it is imperative that a VN knows exactly what they are doing, but more importantly why. This is where research comes to the fore; evidence-based, gold standard nursing practice is what all VNs should be striving to utilize or implement in order to maximize job satisfaction with regards to providing the best standards of care to patients and their owners (Polit and Beck, 2004).
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