ANSWER DISCUSSION…AT LEAST 2 REFERENTS AND NOT 5 YEARS PASS ..THANK YOU

using formal APA writing convention, using the 7th Edition APA

PICOT Question

The clinical issue of interest that I chose to formulate my PICOT question was, telehealth and remote monitoring. According to Melynk and Fineout-Overholt (2019) a PICOT question will formulate the best evidence as well as the most relevant and up to date search related to already existing literature. My PICOT question is: In telehealth and remote monitoring in clinical settings, how does the impact of face-to-face visits compared with telehealth visits affect clinical outcomes?

Search Terms

The search terms that I used to find articles for my PICOT question were “face-to-face visits and telehealth visits.” This initially brought up 372 results in the Thoreau at Walden University Library database. I used the same terms to search in APA PsycInfo which initially gave me 40 articles. 

Databases Utilized for Search

The databases that I used for my search were Thoreau at Walden University Library and APA PsycInfo. I chose APA PsycInfo as I am enrolled for the PMHNP program and thought that the articles related to psych health and telemedicine would be interesting as one day they will affect my practice.  

Search Results, Articles Returned, and Changes from use of Boolean Operators 

According to Walden University, LLC (2018) by using the clinical issue of interest topic and transforming it into a question, such as the PICOT question, it is like designing our own treasure map that will lead to discovery of treasures of literature that can be used to apply to practice. The APA PsycInfo initially gave me 40 articles. From there I put in the dates from 2018-2022 which gave me 28 results. From there I didn’t add any more search terms into my boolean operators but instead I looked through the articles and chose articles that had the terms qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods study in them.  I did a similar type of thing with the Thoreau at Walden University Library database. When searching just for telehealth and face to face visits 381 articles pulled up. I then limited my search to peer reviewed articles and used the dates 2018-2022 it brought it down to 372 articles. I then continued my search by choosing articles that had the words quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods study. 

Database Strategies to Increase Rigor and Effectiveness

To increase rigor and effectiveness of searching the databases I believe that I could’ve continued to add or reduce words to make it much more specific. I could have added words under “and” such as benefits or clinical outcomes. By doing this my search would only gather articles containing all of the terms (Library of Congress, n.d.). This is something that I didn’t know about until I was reading the course materials and found this to be beneficial for my future database searches. 

References

Library of Congress. (n.d.). Search/browse help-Boolean operators and nesting. Retrieved March 22, 2022 from https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/ui/en_US/htdocs/help/searchBoolean.html

Melnyk, B.M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2019). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practice (4th ed.). Wolters Kluwer. 

Walden University, LLC. (Producer). (2018). The Value of Clinical Inquiry [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.