Research in Nursing and Nutrition: Is Randomized Clinical Trial the Actual Gold Standard?

The aim of this study was to assess the quality of reporting of nurse-driven randomized controlled trials involving a direct nutritional intervention. A bibliometric search for randomized controlled trials involving a direct nutritional intervention from 1991 to 2011 in nursing research was conducted. Both quality of the study and design aspects were evaluated. The prevalent randomized controlled trial design used is 2-arm parallel, individual, and randomized with a continuous primary endpoint. Global numbers of randomized controlled trials and the proportion of good-quality randomized controlled trials began a steady and marked rise, more than doubling, from the 1990s to about 2001 and increased slowly thereafter. Studies are overall sufficiently well designed, although there is still room for quality improvement. Additionally, implementation of new randomized controlled trial designs exists and should be advocated.

Trends in RCT nursing research over 20 years: mind the gap.

Randomised controlled trial (RCT) literature plays a fundamental role in informing evidence-based medicine and nursing. This paper aims to track geographical and temporal trends in the publication of RCTs in nursing over the past 20 years by means of a bibliometric analysis. The PubMed database was searched for articles published from 1 January 1991 to 31 October 2011 and satisfying this search strategy: nursing [MeSH Terms] AND (RCT OR trial* OR 'experimental study' OR randomised OR randomisation) AND (English[lang]). Abstracts were reviewed to assess whether they met the criteria for an RCT. A manual search of information on country of origin was carried out and Journal Citation Reports® was used to allocate journals to subject areas. RCT methodology is increasingly drawing the attention of nursing researchers worldwide. However, there is a large disparity in research productivity, at least in terms of number of published RCTs in the English language and listed on PubMed, between the most productive continents, North America and Europe, and the others.

Family assistants' living and working conditions and their interaction with patient and family caregiver variables.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: The progressive and constant aging of the global population together with the economy crises and the social variations within family contexts increasingly leads to the use of external resources (Home Care Workers, HCWs) for health care within one's own family of origin. Purpose of the study is to describe Italian Home Care Workers' (HCWs) living and working conditions and understand the interactions with outcomes of the patients and informal caregiver. METHODS: Observational study with cross sectional design to evaluate the interaction of HCWs without specific training on patients and informal caregivers' outcomes. RESULTS: understand Italian HCWs' condition and interaction between these conditions and outcomes of patients and informal caregiver. CONCLUSIONS: understanding how HCWs' conditions can affect outcome about patient and informal caregivers, represents a fundamental step in order to increase QoL of these families.