APN Dissertation: Support Groups & Antenatal Care Attendance in Saudi

This APN dissertation investigates the impact of support groups supervised by locally advanced nurse practitioners on improving pregnant women's attendance at antenatal care in Saudi Arabia. The study utilizes Watson’s theory of caring and Peplau’s theory of interpersonal relations as its framework. A qualitative research approach, employing descriptive survey methods, is used, involving semi-structured interviews with 25 locally advanced nurse practitioners. The research explores their experiences and perspectives on how their support groups influence antenatal care attendance. Data analysis involves transcribing the interviews and conducting thematic content analysis to identify significant statements and emergent themes related to the research question. The dissertation also details the methodology, including research philosophy, approach, strategy, and ethical considerations.

Running head: APN DISSERTATION
APN Dissertation
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction/Background Framework
The main framework of the study will be based on two prominent nursing theories
namely Watson’s theory of caring and Peplau’s theory of interpersonal relations. Watson’s
theory of caring mainly emphasize over the nursing practice of loving-kindness and
equanimity while respecting the spiritual belief of the service users towards the wholeness of
the mind, body and spirit. The Watson’s theory of caring mainly upholds the principal of the
transpersonal caring relationship between the nurses and the service users based on the pillar
of commitment, harmony, respect lover and consciousness (Foss-Durant 2014). The
researcher has selected Watson’s theory because it will help to focus on the relational process
of how the presence support groups supervised by locally advanced nurse practitioner
impacts the attendance of the pregnant women to antenatal care in Saudi Arabia.
Peplau’s Theory of Interpersonal Relations is a two-factor model which helps in the
understanding of the consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems – Hospital
(HCAHPS). The theory acknowledges the importance of the inter-personal nursing skills in
order to uplift the overall patient’s experience in the nursing care (Hagerty et al. 2017). The
selection of the Peplau’s theory of interpersonal relations helped the research to erect the
latent structure of the study where the role of the nurses and patients’s hospital experiences
will be monitored.
Methodology
Introduction
Research methodology is an important part of dissertation (Taylor, Bogdan and
DeVault 2015). The chapter of the research methodology helps to define the steps or the
approach used for the collection or accumulation of data (Neuman and Robson 2014).

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According to Saunders et al. (2015), research methodology helps the authors to increase the
horizon of knowledge in the domain of data collection, data analysis and data manipulation.
The aim of this research is to investigate how the introduction of support groups supervised
by the locally advanced nurse practitioner can help to improve pregnant women attendance to
antenatal care in Saudi Arabia. The following section is will help identify the steps that will
be used for the conduction of the research along with valid justification.
Research design
Research is a sequential process and the process can be related with peeling each layer
of the onion and this is defined as research opinion by Saunders et al. (2015). Each layer of
the research onion is equally important for conducting the research (Creswell and Poth 2017).
Figure: Research Onion
(Source: Saunders et al. 2015)

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Research philosophy
Research philosophy is the first layer of the research onion. It deals with the process
of data collection data interpretation and data analysis (Hughes and Sharrock 2016). This
layers of the research opinion is used to reflect the assumptions of the authors about the
overall research plan they are adapting. According to Creswell and Clark (2017), there are
numerous types of research philosophies like epistemology, ontology and axiology. Each
view of the research philosophies is associated with different types of research philosophies
like positivism, realism, interpretivism and pragmatism. In this research, the author will use
make use of the pragmatism research philosophy which helps to establish the relationship
between the two variables. The adoption of pragmatism research philosophy helped the
researcher to establish the relationship between presence of locally advanced nurse
practitioners as the support groups and increase in the attendance of the pregnant women in
the antenatal care in the Saudi Arabia. Mayer (2015) stated that pragmatism research
philosophy takes into account of the lived experiences and thus will be helpful in
understanding the opinion of the nurses about how their presence influence to footfall of the
pregnant women in the antenatal care.
Research approach
It is the second layer of the research opinion and it can be classified into two different
types namely deductive and inductive research approach. Deductive research approach deals
with use of the existing literatures to identify theories and relate the same with the evolving
data in the research. The inductive research approach deals with generation of the new
theories based on the new data (Creswell and Clark 2017). In this research, the author used
deductive research approach will order to related the existing theories of the nursing practice
with the data evolved in the nurse interview. The theories of the nursing practice that will be

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used in this research include Watson’s theory of caring and Peplau’s theory of the
interpersonal relations.
Research strategy and time horizons
Research strategy and time horizons are the third and fourth layers of the research
onion respectively (Saunders et al. 2015). Research strategies are of various types like
exploratory, casual and descriptive. Exploratory research attempts to understand the problem
that has been stated clearly for the establishment of priority and thereby helping to resolve the
problem (Brannen 2017). However, highlighting a problem in the nursing practice is not the
scope of the research. The research aims to highlight relationship between the presence of the
support groups supervised by locally advanced nursing professionals and pregnant women
accessing the antenatal care in Saudi Arabia such that the researcher has used descriptive
research strategy. Noble and Mitchell (2016) stated that descriptive type research strategy is
used to describe the situations and not making accurate prediction or to define cause-effect
relationships. There are three main types of descriptive methods namely case-study methods,
survey methods and observational methods. In this research, the research will use descriptive
type survey study. The survey method research is defined as a process by which the
participants answer questions administered with the help to the interviews or questions. Since
the researcher has conducted semi-structured interview with open ended question, descriptive
type survey study was selected.
Research Methods
There are three different types of research methods namely qualitative, quantitative
ane mixed methods (Bryman 2016). Robinson (2014) has stated that determination of the
research methods depends upon the scope of the research. In this research, the scholar has
used qualitative research method in order to investigate the relationship between the presence
of support groups supervised by locally advanced nurse practitioner helps in improving

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pregnant women attendance to antenatal care in Saudi Arabia. Since interview will be
conducted with the help of the open-ended question, conduction of the quantitative research
with numerical data is ruled out.
Target population
Population is a comprehensive number of components like organisations, individuals
or items, which are required to be measured as the main sample of the data (Etikan, Musa and
Alkassim 2016). However, seeking opinion from everyone in all place is time consuming and
not cost-effective. Such a sample size will selected for the researcher in order to generalize
the results for the whole population. For this research, locally advanced nursing professionals
of Saudi Arabia will be selected for the interview.
Qualitative Interview Sample
The sample size of the research is 25 locally advanced nurse practitioners who have
supervised the support groups in the antenatal care unit in Saudi Arabia.
Sampling strategy
The process of sampling is defined as a process of selection of the subset cases from
the total number of units in order draw the generalised conclusions for the entire body of
units. If the population is large, it becomes difficult for the authors study the entire population
(Palinkas et al. 2015). To reduce the total expenditure and time, a sample size of 25 was
selected for this research. The main sampling procedure used for this research includes
probability sampling. The probability sampling is associated with the experimental type
research design and provides every participant an equal opportunity to get selected for the
research. This helps to reduce the selection bias (Emerson 2015). The criteria that is used for
the selection of the sample population include:
(i) Age group: 25 to 45 years

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(ii) Have lived experience of handling pregnant women
(iii) Going through pregnancy
Development of Questionnaire (open-ended questions)
For the development of open-ended questions, the previously published literatures
were cited and after the generation of the question, the sequence of the question is further
arranged.
Reliability and Validity of the Interview
In order to examine the reliability and validity of the interview process, two nurse
managers with experience of more than 5 in the antenatal care were selected and they were
asked to give their personal feedbacks about the structure, sequence and the pattern of the
questions. Based on their feedbacks, further modifications in the questionnaire were done.
The nurse managers selected were blinded about the scope of the study (Noble and Smith
2015).
Data collection
The collection of data will be done by face-to-face interview and the entire interview
process will be recorded in the audio-recorder. In interview process, audio-recorder is
regarded as the main instrument for data collection. Moreover, face-to-face semi-structured
interview with open-ended questions helps the participants to illustrate their though process
in an explicit manner (Ranney et al. 2015).
Data analysis
The recorded audio file was transcribed into a written format and then content
analysis was done based on the significant statements highlighted in the interview. The
responses were studied thematically and the emergent themes is subsequently categorised

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based on the significant statements highlighted in the interview ((Roulston and Shelton
2015).

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References
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Bryman, A. 2016. Social research methods.Oxford university press. London
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Etikan, I., Musa, S. A., andAlkassim, R. S. 2016.Comparison of convenience sampling and
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Noble, H., and Mitchell, G. 2016. What is grounded theory?. Evidence-based nursing, 19(2),
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