Evidence Based Nursing Research

Running head: Evidence Based Nursing Research
Evidence Based Nursing Research
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1Evidence Based Nursing Research
PICO(T) question
The research question for this assignment will be:
Does problem solving intervention compared to usual care process is able to reduce
the depression symptoms in older adults with no visible secondary health condition within
2 months of application?
As per the Andersson & Titov (2014), mental health and especially depression is one of
the major concerns for the healthcare authorities of Australia as in 2 in every 4 people is
suffering from depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions nowadays. Therefore, this
research question was chosen to determine the effectiveness of the intervention which is useful in
reducing the symptoms related to depression within 2 months of period. In this aspect
comparison between usual intervention and problem soling intervention will be carried out.
Evaluation of research
The primary research article which will be chosen for this aspect is by Stahl et al. (2014).
The aim of the research was to conduct a study where problem solving therapy is applied with
that of another effective therapy in older patients suffering from depression as the population is
generally is resistant to antidepressant drugs (Garand et al., 2014). The research design which
was undertaken for this assessment, is the two site randomized controlled trial and the selected
population were people with 60 years and above and they were randomly assigned to a usual
intervention and the problem solving intervention and they were assessed in week 3,6,9 and 12.
In this research from 653 participants only 221 were selected for the analysis as they met the
inclusion criteria and hence, on them the selected interventions were carried out (Cuijpers et al.,

2Evidence Based Nursing Research
2014). After the research it was found that maximum rate of remission was achieved in the week
9 and 12 in the group on which problem solving intervention was carried out and the rate was
36.9% in week 9 and 45.6 % in week 12. The researchers followed the ethical consideration
while conducting the research as they maintained the anonymity of the randomized control trail
and eliminated the manual bias from the research process (Cuijpers et al., 2014). Besides the
finding section of the article successfully summarized the complete research process and
associated results in the section. Therefore, the paper successfully included each aspect of the
primary research (Choi et al., 2014).
Research topic
This systematic review paper deals with the problem solving intervention for the
depression affected individual and hence, it is important to discuss the effectiveness of the
problem solving intervention for depression and anxiety management. The research topic deals
with the problem solving therapy and its effectiveness in helping people with mental illness (van
der Aa et al., 2014). As per Keefe et al. (2014), t is a well-established and an evidence based
intervention that helps people to get effective treatment and care as the primary target of the
intervention is the anxiety and comorbid situation. As the research topic is comparison between a
usual healthcare intervention and the problem solving interventions for patients affected with
depression in controlling and managing the depression condition, Garand et al. (2014) mentions
that this intervention is helpful in managing the patient condition than cognitive behavioral or
pharmacological interventions as it helps to remove the doubts and concerns of patients.
The problem solving session could have been of any format such as questionnaire or
booklet using which people of the old age can understand use them to share their distress and
tension with healthcare professionals around them (Keefe et al., 2014). Therefore, it provides an