Article Critique: Anxiety
Article Critique
The paper is titled “Comparison of anxiety Assessments between Clinicians and Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction in Cardiac Critical Care Units”. As the title depicts, the paper is trying to examine if there is any difference between the assessment of anxiety by patients and clinicians after an episode of myocardial infarction.
1.Is there a clear statement of a problem? In the abstract that was written about the paper, the research problem was stated as Anxiety being a significant factor in the recovery of patients that have just suffered a myocardial infarction. However, in the body of the paper, this research problem was not clearly spelt out succinctly.
2.What is the hypothesis? The working hypothesis is that anxiety, amongst other emotional states that are negative, has a physiological effect on the patient which can result in adverse clinical outcomes for the patient.
3.Was the population clearly identified? What was the population being examined?
The population was clearly identified. The population under study includes all patients who have just suffered from a Myocardial Infarction and are under critical care. The study period included the initial 48 hours after the infarction attack.4.How was the sample selected? Was it adequate, why/why not?
In selecting the patients, the researchers did not show the details of how the patients were recruited into the study. Although the researchers mentioned the inclusion criteria which included all patients of any age and sex who had an acute episode of myocardial infarction which was confirmed by electrocardiography and serum evidence of elevated cardiac enzymes. Moreover, other conditions included being free of pain and being stable hemodynamically during the course of the interview. The researchers appeared to have recruited the patients serially into the study; which is a form of convenience sampling technique. This sampling technique is far from objective and has the tendency to introduce biases into the result. On the basis of this, it appears as if the sampling was not done appropriately by the researchers.
5.What was the independent variable?
The independent variable that was defined in the study is the presence of Acute myocardial infarction in the patients.6.What was the dependent variable?
The dependent variables that was defined in the study is the level of anxiety being experienced by the patient as assessed by the clinicians and also the patient7.What was the method of choice: survey, observation, correlation? Hypothesize why the researchers chose that method.
The study was a descriptive study in which the researchers correlated clinicians’ assessment of the presence of anxiety in the patients with the patients’ self assessment of anxiety itself. The researchers have used this method to try and determine if there is a statistically significant difference between the patients’ assessment of anxiety and the clinicians’ assessment of the presence or otherwise, of anxiety.
REFERENCE
O'Brien, J L; Moser, D K; Riegel, B; Frazier, S K et al (2001). Comparison of Anxiety Assessments between Clinicians and Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction in Cardial Critical Care Units. American Journal of Critical Care; Mar 2001; 10, 2
