Research Proposal: Nurse Practitioners

Griffith, White and Gardner (2002) make the point that most people take better care of their cars than they do of their own bodies. The notion of "upkeep" is a known necessity for cars but very few people apply this concept to themselves. Instead, they wait until there is some injury or disease to the body before utilizing available healthcare services; and after a brief period of recovery, they will often no longer use these services until once again an injury or some other problem occurs. However, in order to maintain the body in a condition of continued health, there is a need for ongoing utilization of medical services, e.g., screening for various conditions, regular physical checkups, immunization, and so forth. This is termed "maintenance health care."

As Griffith et. al (2002) report, most medical clinicians consider getting their patients to engage in maintenance healthcare behavior an important and significant goal of their practice. However, a key research question that might be asked in the area of maintenance healthcare is whether some medical clinicians have a higher success rate than others in terms of getting their patients to engage in maintenance healthcare? What makes this a reasonable question is the fact that in today's health care system there are a far greater variety of medical clinicia

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come to be known as the Stetler-Marram Model consisting of utilization focused researched aimed at helping medical professionals such as nurses make a series of focused judgements about various elements (e.g., appropriateness, desirability, feasibility, validity, etc.) of a given nursing practice (Stetler, 2001). Thus, the proposed research should be seen as an initial step in arriving at judgements about the differences between the practices of physicians and NPs in the area of motivating their patients to engage in maintenance healthcare. As such, it can be a springboard for further investigation into causes of any observed differences and to changes in both clinicians' practices as they relate to maintenance healthcare. Hypothesis Neale (1999), states that the central role of the Nurse Practitioner is one of health promotion and disease prevention. Thus, a primary focus of NP practice is not merely to treat people for acute illness but also to teach people behaviors that they need to engage in order to stay healthy, behaviors such as the that of engaging in maintenance health care. This fact gives reason to believe that patients seen by NPs may indeed be more likely to engage in maintenance healthcare than patients seen by p
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Research____________________________ Procedures, White Gardner, Kantsevoy Margolis, Spross Hanson, Concerns Callahan, Smith Glenn, Linton Gallo, Nurse Practitioner, Closs EBR, Hancock Bethea, maintenance healthcare, nurse practitioners, health care, health maintenance, engage maintenance healthcare, nursing practice, engage maintenance, informed consent, patients engage, patients physicians, nurse practitioner, informed consent form, patients nurse practitioners, maintenance healthcare patients, preventive health care,
Approximate Word count = 4317
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)

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