As a nurse manager, you trial a new pain scale on your unit that is su

QUESTION

As a nurse manager, you trial a new pain scale on your unit that is supported by numerous research studies. You compare the patient outcomes with the new scale against the existing scale.

Feedback from staff suggests that the new scale is too difficult for patients who have limited language skills and who are already under duress to understand. The difficulty in implementing the new scale refers to testing:

a. Efficacy.
b. Effectiveness.
c. Practice failure.
d. Comparative error.

ANSWER:

ANS: B
Comparing the effectiveness of interventions can help to address the needs of clinicians in determining best practices for their patients. Comparative effectiveness research (CER) is the “generation and synthesis of evidence that compares the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor a clinical condition or to improve the delivery of care” (Institute of Medicine, 2009, p. 29). Efficacy is testing an intervention or treatment in a traditional randomized clinical trial under carefully controlled conditions and is used to determine whether an intervention or treatment works, whereas effectiveness is testing whether the intervention or treatment works in the real world of practice.