Your research group wants to obtain a sample of Australian intensive care nurses to determine their perceptions of research utilisation and the degree to which it informs their clinical practice. Which sampling strategies would you employ to recruit the participants? What might the inclusion/exclusion criteria be for your study?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

ANSWERS There is no list of intensive care nurses in Australia. A sample could be drawn from a membership list of the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses (ACCCN), however, this sampling frame excludes many nurses working in ICU who are not members of ACCCN, therefore your sample would not be representative of the population. In this case a cluster sampling method is proposed. A random sample could be generated from a two-stage cluster sampling procedure where in the first stage hospitals could be randomly assigned from a listing of all the hospitals in Australia. The second stage cluster would include the random assigning of specific intensive care units from the identified hospitals. All the nurses employed in the randomly chosen units would be invited to participate in the study and would form the sample. The inclusion/exclusion criteria may include: • a minimum amount of clinical experience (e.g. > 6 months) • full-time vs part-time employment • provide direct patient care vs management, education or clinical nurse consultants • work a rotating shift vs permanent night duty.