Critical Review: Research Methods in Adverse Drug Reactions Study

This essay critically reviews a research paper focusing on adverse drug reactions in hospital inpatients, specifically examining the frequency, severity, and preventability of emergency department visits related to these reactions. The original study employed a prospective observational design at a te...Read More

Running head: RESEARCH METHODS
RESEARCH METHODS
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

1RESEARCH METHODS
Adverse drug reactions
Adverse drug reactions in hospital inpatients is one of the unfavorable occurrences in a
hospital that might even lead to mortality and morbidity. Adverse drug reactions and is mainly
caused due to drug misuse or multiple drug use. The paper aims to assess the severity, frequency
and preventability of the hospital visits due to adverse drug reactions of a large tertiary care
center. The paper also aimed to classify the visits due to the drug related problems and to identify
the patient, prescriber, and the other factors related to this visit.
The study design used for this study is a prospective observational design conducted at
the emergency department of the Vancouver general hospital and a University of Columbia
teaching hospital. Patients visiting the tertiary care center during the data collection shift were
sampled systematically. One patient from all the patient was selected by the help of a
computerized randomization program, who have presented in the 1 hour time period before the
starting of the data collection shift. Other patients were again selected by randomization.
The different outcome measures for this study selected are direct complaint of drug
interaction, drug reactions, wrong selection of the drugs subtherapeutic dosages and on
adherence to the drugs.
Descriptive statistics were used to analyses the data, consisting of the means, standard
deviation, medians or the interquartile ranges. As per the results, adverse drug reaction was
found to be 12 % of the emergency departmental visits. The rates of the hospital visits and
hospital admissions were found to be longer that the patients visiting for other factors.

2RESEARCH METHODS
The research paper has got several limitations. In spite of taking a standardized approach,
bias might occur while determining whether the visit was a drug related visit. Again the
physicians of the emergency department might be increased by the sudden attention to the drug
related visits. One of the important limitation is the location chosen, which cannot be generalized
to the entire population and thus the external validity is less. The internal validity of this paper is
less as the as confounding was present than one of more variable. Due to the presence of the
chance of bias, the study could not possibly eliminate the confounding factors. According to
Brannen, (2017), the less is the chance of confounding, the higher is the internal validity of the
result. Again, although an independent adjunction process was formulated for the review of the
case summaries, but bias might also occur at this stage. Apart from reviewing the case
summaries adjudicators could get access to all the medical records. However, the
recommendations put forward by this study is appropriate, that is future research should entirely
emphasize on the interventions for optimizing the communication between the health
professionals in acute care settings.

3RESEARCH METHODS
References
Brannen, J. (2017). Mixing methods: Qualitative and quantitative research. Routledge.
Neuman, W. L. (2013). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Pearson education.