Capstone Proposal Paper

Words: 1525
Pages: 7

According to Keele (2011), research questions and hypotheses flow from a good problem statement (p. 21). The PICO blueprint helps format your problem statement by using four main categories: patient population/problem, intervention, comparison, and outcome (Polit & Beck, 2008). In cardiac surgery patients there is an association with sleep disturbances; what is the effect of increasing nursing education and interventions on sleep hygiene in comparison to standard of care with the intention of reducing sleep disturbances. My focus for the Capstone Proposal Project will be the effects of nursing education and intervention on sleep disturbances encountered by the cardiac surgery population. This paper will reveal the research questions associated with my Capstone Proposal Project, as well as, the proposed strategy.
Research Questions Research questions need to be specific so
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Since my participants are the cardiac surgical patients on the cardiothoracic surgery stepdown units, there will be limited sample size. Cardiothoracic surgery stepdown units hold a mixture of cardiac surgeries and thoracic surgeries, which limits my participants. The cardiothoracic surgery stepdown units could possible house “off-service” patients if there are no other beds available in the hospital and our patient population census is low. In Pröpper, van Valen, van Domburg, Brunott, and Bogers’ (2015) study, “the number of patients enrolled was limited, and this made it more difficult to generalize the findings of this study to the overall population of cardiothoracic surgery patients” (p. 536). I plan to address this variable by involving all of the cardiothoracic surgery patients within Duke University Hospital and choosing the time of the study to be at the beginning of the year. The beginning of the year is when the cardiothoracic surgeries are generally higher, due to the surgeries slowing down around the