Medicine Literature Review Comparison of Research Questions

Literature Review
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Literature Review
Introduction
A major problem for nursing establishments and staffers the world over is the shortage of staff – nurses are in very short supply, as older nurses retire and there aren’t enough to fill their ranks from below. This shortage has a knock-on effect for any service which utilises nurses and their skills – hospitals and clinics cannot offer the same level of services and care which they would otherwise be able to offer to those who need it, meaning that people who are in need of medical help will have to do with sub-standard level of it. The nurses themselves will necessarily face difficulties due to the shortage of staff, ranging from workloads which are too much for them to emotional and physical burnouts as they try to cope with the slack.
This paper aims to take the work done previously concerning nursing shortages, the sample population which it will be affected by, and the research questions which have been posited concerning the shortage and its effects. To that end, this paper will feature discussion of all of these separate elements, before summing everything up in a conclusion at the end. This paper is aiming to discuss what has been done in terms of research, as well as looking how this research could be pursued in the future through other forms of study.
Comparison of Research Questions
Research questions on the subject have ranged from how to best assess the situation (and thereby learn how to most appropriately deal with it), including how to best conduct that research (Minnesota Department of Health, 2015, 1). Other research questions concern the various outcomes which can be expected as a result of the nursing shortage, with some research being concerned with the external effects (i.e. the effects on both patients and the financial wellbeing) of hospitals and clinics, respectively (Lake, Germack, Viscardi, 2016, 1; Everhart, Neff, Al-Amim, et al, 2013, 1), and some research focused on the internal; that is to say, on the effect which the nursing shortage will have on the nurses themselves (MacPhee, Dahinten, Havaei, 2017, 1).
These research questions are all different in that they look at the different aspects of the nursing shortage; no two questions are the same, though the ones posed by Lake, Germack, and Viscardi (2016) and Everhardt, Neff, Al-Amin, Nogle, and Weech-Maldonado (2013) are both concerned with external effects, and so are similar in that regard. Having all the questions be different allows us to fully determine what the problem is from all angles, which helps both in understanding the problem, and in helping to determine what the future research should entail.
A Comparison of Sample Populations
All of the research papers involve sample populations which are involved in the hospitals and clinics in question: the only deviation is seen in the work of MacPhee, Dahinten, and Havaei (2017) which directly involves the patients, as they are necessarily going to be the group whi...