Methodology

My research on this topic will be primarily conducted through a survey of practicing anesthesiologists. In order to discover whether or not the current practice of physicians using their personal judgement and criteria before prescribing a PCA pump ensures patient safety, I first have to find out what criteria physicians tend to personally consider before every PCA prescription they write. My survey will reveal what criteria physicians consider at hospitals where there is no PCA pump protocol, and what criteria physicians have to look at at hospitals where there is such a protocol in place. Comparing these two will allow me to determine if physicians are personally considering the issues that most commonly lead to PCA pump complications, such as asthma, obesity, conflicting medications, and confusion/delirium.

My survey will split into two large sections, with a group of questions for hospitals without PCA pump protocols and a group for hospitals with protocols. For hospitals with protocols, questions will focus on what exactly the protocol requires physicians to check out, and how much of a detriment following the protocol places on the doctor’s work (such as wasting large amounts of time running non-essential tests). For hospitals without a protocol, the questioning will be far more intensive, as I will attempt to find out what the physicians personally consider prior to prescribing a pump with both yes/no questions and short answer questions. I will read over the results to the short-answer questions to identify common themes (for example, that most physicians tend to ask patients if they have sleep apnea or take any prescription medications). This will allow me to eventually make conclusions regarding the tests most doctors run before prescribing PCA pumps. This survey design gives this research both a quantitative and qualitative aspect, eliminating many of the restrictions to purely qualitative or purely quantitative studies (Creswell).

For my sample, I am looking for anesthesiologists at hospitals. This survey was sent in an email to the head of anesthesiology at every major hospital in the Scottsdale area and requested that they give it to all anesthesiologists in their department, ensuring a large amount of data from each healthcare facility. Major hospitals have just been defined as those that have a department of anesthesiology, as smaller hospitals don’t have this distinct department and it would be impossible to efficiently determine who to contact for questions regarding anesthesiology at such hospitals.

In conjunction with this survey, I will be using public health data to look at the amount of time it takes to run tests for several of the pre-existing conditions that complicate PCA pumps, such as sleep apnea and confusion/delirium. This will allow me to determine whether or not running  these tests places an undue strain on the health care system, a strain that could also cause negative patient outcomes.

In my next blog post, I will look at more of the data analysis techniques I am using on my survey results and tie them in with the data I have found on public health databases for running patient tests.

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