Exclusion and inclusion criteria are means used to establish precision in a research study that is inform of a cohort or case-control study. The research study presented in this article does not clearly identify the sampling exclusion and inclusion criteria. Instead, only the sampling design that was employed has been identified by the researchers. It fails to give a means of including and excluding participants who could take part in the study (Bohomol, Ramos and innocenzo, 2009).
A sample size is identified in the research study presented in this article. The actual sample size included a total of forty four adults who were diagnosed with medical and surgical conditions. These participants were a representation of all the inpatients within the Intensive Care Unit during the research period of thirty days.
Performance of power analysis and estimation of sample size is a fundamental aspect of experimental design because without this step, the sample size estimations may be unreliable. The research study presented in this article does not provide a report of power analysis. Since power analysis was not used, it can be presumed that the sample size sued by the researchers was appropriate and did not require the use of power analysis tools and software (Bohomol, et al., 2009).
Refusal rate is defined as the percentage or number of people who refused to take part in a research study. Sample mortality on the other hand is defined as the number of reported participant deaths. This may include the number of people who die in the course of a given research study. The issue of sample mortality has been addressed in this research study. Researchers have noted that the sample mortality rate was extremely high because participants comprised of severely sick patients in the Intensive Care Unit. The study however fails to address the issue of refusal rate. There is no indication or report about the number of individuals who decline to participate in the research study.
One characteristics of the sample that has been detailed is that the population had to consist of patients in the Intensive Care Unit. The other detail is that of the sample size that had to be a total of forty patients, who were inpatients in the entire thirty-day research period (Bohomol, et al., 2009).
The sampling method used in this study was a quantitative survey. This method is sufficient to obtain a representative sample. Moreover, the sampling design presented in this article is non-probability sampling because it entails non-random selection of participants. Only patients that were severely ill in the intensive care unit were selected to participate in the study. This implies that the selection was non-random and hence non-probability sampling (Bohomol, et al., 2009).
The research study does not identify potential biases in the sample. It however identifies the target of the study, which are healthcare professionals. It is clear that medical errors are prevalent in the healthcare profession, and it is important to physicians to have knowledge of the various causes of medical errors (Bohomol, et al., 2009).
Reference
Bohomol, E., Ramos, L. H., & innocenzo, M. (2009). Medication errors in an intensive care unit. Journal of Advanced Nursing 65(6), 1259-1267.
