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Qualitative and mixed-method studies are valuable for nursing practitioners to retrieve sufficient evidence. The issue identified in the practicum site is that the number of impoverished patients who skip the follow-up appointments increases. Various studies that discuss the correlation between socio-economic, healthcare quality factors, and willingness to attend the additional visit exist, and the recent pandemic made the topic more urgent (Alshak et al., 2021). The article “Negative impacts of COVID-19 lockdown on mental health service access and follow-up adherence for immigrants and individuals in socio-economic difficulties” by Aragona et al. discusses the follow-up visits. This paper aims to appraise the selected study and assess its potential application for future practice.
The number of skipped follow-ups increased due to the lockdowns; however, the cases where the repeated appointment is crucial, such as mental disorders treatment, still existed. The purpose of the study was to reveal the pandemic’s impact on outpatient services for migrants and patients in socio-economic difficulties and estimate how these factors influence follow-up attendance (Aragona et al., 2020). The research raised the critical question of the need for equal quality of healthcare for everyone and identified the challenges due to the COVID-19 lockdowns.
The research was designed as a retrospective cross-sectional study that allowed the scientists to retrieve the pre-pandemic data and compare it to the recent statistics. The mental health outpatient visits data were retrieved for each February and March between 2017 and 2020 to identify the one-month follow-up (Aragona et al., 2020). Patients’ records were studied to retrieve their socio-economic status and calculate the percentage of the most vulnerable populations. The cross-sectional design allowed the researchers to observe the prevalence of skipped follow-ups among the immigrants and patients with socio-economic difficulties, proving the existence of the attendance issue.
The sampling of the selected study is relatively narrow, yet it allowed the researchers to conduct a detailed data analysis and was sufficient to identify the tendencies for follow-up visits. The 286 patients were chosen because they attended the psychiatric interview in February and March of 2017-2020, and the February group was the baseline population (Aragona et al., 2020). During sampling, sociodemographic data and diagnoses were also considered to increase the scope of evidence retrieved from the research (Spector, 2019). As the study is retrospective, the primary data collection method was patient records’ analysis and categorization to retrieve the trends.
The findings submitted the growing challenge of skipped follow-up visits and revealed that socio-economic difficulties influence patients’ attendance aside from the pandemic-related complications. Aragona et al. (2020) state that “only 17.53% of patients accessing the mental health outpatient service in February 2020 came back for the scheduled follow-up appointment in March 2020, showing a significant decrease of 46.57%” (p. 54). The study’s strength is that it explored the novel and urgent topic of the COVID-19 impact on the healthcare industry, providing a foundation for further services’ improvement (Alshak et al., 2021). The main limitation of the selected research is that it was conducted retrospectively with narrow sampling, making its results difficult to generalize for other organizations. However, the study design and data analysis can be applied for future practice to retrieve insights about the specific patient characteristics and their perception of healthcare services (Bell et al., 2021). Indeed, similar retrospective research can be performed with patient records of a practicum site where the decreased attendance among the impoverished beneficiaries has already been noticed to prove the negative tendency.
Scholarly articles that discuss the pandemic help the healthcare industries to adjust their practices and maintain the services at the highest quality level possible. The selected study submitted the follow-up visit problem and provided evidence that socio-economic difficulties also influence the patients’ attendance. The research design and sampling are appropriate for organizations to retrieve trends in their beneficiaries’ behavior and calculate the results for further exploration.
References
Alshak, M. N., Li, H. A., & Wehmeyer, G. T. (2021). Medical students as essential frontline researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Academic Medicine, 96(7), 964-966. Web.
Aragona, M., Barbato, A., Cavani, A., Costanzo, G., & Mirisola, C. (2020). Negative impacts of COVID-19 lockdown on mental health service access and follow-up adherence for immigrants and individuals in socio-economic difficulties. Public Health, 186, 52-56. Web.
Bell, L. C., Norris-Grey, C., Luintel, A., Bidwell, G., Lanham, D., Marks, M., Baruah, T., O’Shea, L., Heightman, M., & Logan, S. (2021). Implementation and evaluation of a COVID-19 rapid follow-up service for patients discharged from the emergency department. Clinical Medicine, 21(1), 57-62. Web.
Spector, P. E. (2019). Do not cross me: Optimizing the use of cross-sectional designs. Journal of Business and Psychology, 34(2), 125-137. Web.
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