Week 7 Discussion The discussion assignment provides a forum for discussing relevant topics for this week based on the course competencies covered. For this assignment, make sure you post your initial response to the Discussion Area by the due date assigned.

Nurses play a significant role in providing patient care to patients. However, nurses usually face events or happenings in these settings, which may be a barrier to their work. For example, nurses face ethical dilemmas on a daily basis, which in most cases is related to care (Haahr et al.,2020).

As such, nurses should possess adequate knowledge of how to deal with such situations. Researchers have made efforts to research on ethics, hence writing research articles on ethical research and ethical theory. Therefore, this discussion focuses on two peer-reviewed articles pertaining to ethical research related to the topic of interest.
One of the articles is an article which was authored by Hanna et al.(2021).

This research focused on exploring the association between stent dwell time and UTI. This research focused on ethics and ethical considerations as the researchers ensured that the de-identified was securely stored in a password-protected database on the hospital network to ensure patient confidentiality and privacy. The analysis revealed that only 4.3% of patients had UTI when the stent dwell time was less than one month, as compared to 26.2% when the time was longer than one month (p= 0.021).

One of the strengths of this article is that it revealed the significant impact that stent dwell time has on UTI development. On the other hand, this was a retrospective study, hence prone to bias such as recall bias. The significance of these findings is that reducing the stent dwell time significantly reduces UTI and hence should form part of practice (Hanna et al.,2021). This evidence can be applied to the topic as the use of the intervention can lead to a significant reduction in UTI.

In addition, as part of the program to help reduce the rates of UTIs, it will be important to adhere to ethical requirements or considerations. As expressed in this article, the privacy and confidentiality of the patient’s data will be achieved through the use of data encryption and passwords. In addition, the patient’s consent will also be obtained before embarking on the program for reducing or preventing UTIs

The other article is an article authored by Alshareef et al.(2020). This article focused on exploring the impact of antibiotic de-escalation on patients with urinary tract infections as part of an antibiotic stewardship program. The analysis of the data showed that the patients who had a successful de-escalation had a significantly reduced length of hospital stay as compared to those who had a failed de-escalation (p<0.001), showing the importance of de-escalation.

One strength of this study is that it showed the importance of de-escalation as part of antimicrobial stewardship strategies as it is connected to better patient outcomes. However, one of the weaknesses of this study is that the number of participants was notably small, which could have led to bias. It was also a single-center study; hence, it lacks generalizability.

This study also focused on ethical considerations as privacy and data confidentiality were achieved through encryption. The evidence presented here can be applied to the topic of interest. For example, the antibiotic de-escalation can be applied to help reduce the rates of UTI. It is also important to consider the ethical aspects of implementing the evidence obtained here.

For example, the patient’s de-identified data will have to be protected using various strategies, such as through the use of passwords (Crowhurst et al.,2019). In addition, access to the patient data will only be granted to authorized individuals to ensure that data protection is achieved.

It is important to explore how ethical knowledge can be applied to my DNP project plans. The project focuses on urinary tract infections and antibiotic stewardship. Therefore, the ethical knowledge will be applied to the project population. For example, it will be important to obtain informed consent from the research participants and succinctly communicate the project’s aim, procedures, benefits, and potential risks.

Participant’s information will have to be kept private and confidential. For example, storing and restricting access to patient’s data and information to authorized individuals only (Spencer & Patel, 2019). It will also be important to promote equity and fairness by striving for a representative and inclusive project population and staying clear of bias or discrimination when selecting study participants.

As part of data collection, it will be important to ensure that only strategies that align with strong data security will be used to help protect patient information. There will also be a need to minimize potential harm to participants when collecting the project data.

References

• Alshareef, H., Alfahad, W., Albaadani, A., Alyaz