Critical Analysis of Smeulers et al. (2014) Nurses' Experiences and Perspectives on Medication Safety Practices

Running head: CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ARTICLE
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Critical Analysis of Article
Student’s Name
University

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ARTICLE
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Smeulers, M., Onderwater, A. T., Zwieten, M. C., & Vermeulen, H. (2014). Nurses'
experiences and perspectives on medication safety practices: an explorative
qualitative study. Journal of nursing management.
Introduction
This essay offers a critical analysis of Smeulers, Onderwater, Zwieten & Vermeulen
(2014) article the nurses' experiences and perspectives on medication safety practices: an
explorative qualitative study. The article offers an overview of the whole research and the areas
that the research was focusing on. It highlights the importance of medical safety and reducing of
medical errors within the medical settings. The role of the study was to focus on the experience
of nurses in reduction of medical errors to improve safety. The introduction meets the
requirements of a research study since it highlights the major areas of the study by giving the
reader an overview of what the study will cover. Franklin (2012) suggests that the introduction
part should be appealing to the reader by giving background information on the research topic.
This entails issues from the global perspective and local perspective on how the study analyses
the problem.
The introduction is supposed to lead the reader from a general subject area then narrows
down to the particular topic area that the study is addressing. This leads to the establishment of
the scope, context and significance of the study as a summary which needs to be supported in the
research questions (Bryman, 2015). The researcher starts by presenting that errors are associated
with healthcare expenses which vary from facility to facility to facility. The researcher deeps
further to explain contexts in which medical errors arise which include medication preparation
and administration errors. The introduction offers clear background information on the topic for

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the reader by tracing evidence of strategies to address these errors. However, the introduction
fails to lead the reader to the justification of the study since it does not narrow down to the
specific relevance of the study nor does it have hypothesis that will be tested.
The research problem and its significance
The research problem for the study is exploring the role of nurse’s experience with
perspectives on preventing medical administration errors. The problem statement for the study is
merged in the introduction by giving both background information and the research problem
statement to the reader. However, it is stated clearly and consciously at the top of the research
article to allow the reader to pinpoint it from the rest of the research. This ensures that the reader
understands what the researcher was focusing on.
Bhakar & Nathani (2015) suggests that one characteristic of a good research problem is
its ability to generate research questions. Although the article has not highlighted research
questions that were used in the research, the aim of the study offers the general question to the
reader that can be followed through the research article. Grand challenges characteristics have
been used to appraise and determine the strength of a research topic and challenge. Scholars
argue that a good research problem needs to meet the grounded theory requirements by having a
theoretical framework for their analysis (Howell, 2013)The researcher proves this by analyzing
different sets of literature that the topic relates to as a way of opening up the problem for the
reader to understand the context of the problem. The researcher engages with literature and
previous research to connect the reader with other studies done before thus justifying the grand
challenge level of the problem.
The research design and the methods.