Construction and Adaptation of Management and health care measures in nursing

EDITORIAL

Construction and Adaptation of Management and health care measures in nursing

Kazuko Uchikawa Graziano^I; Katia Grillo Padilha^II

^INurse. Full Professor of the Department of Medical-Surgical Nursing, Nursing School of the University of São Paulo. Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Adult Health - PROESA. São Paulo, SP, Brazil. [e-mail]

^IINurse. Full Professor of the Department of Medical-Surgical Nursing, Nursing School of the University of São Paulo. Vice-Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Adult Health - PROESA. São Paulo, SP, Brazil. [e-mail]

The Nursing Graduate Program in Adult Health (PROESA - O Programa de Pós-Graduação Enfermagem na Saúde do Adulto) at the University of São Paulo School of Nursing was created in 2002 from the fusion of two areas of concentration: Fundamentals of Nursing and Institutionalized Adult Health Nursing at the same institution of higher education.

The main purpose of the Program is to prepare nurses for clinical research of advanced technology in Adult Health, integrating nursing science and other areas.

Conducting research involves several steps: from making a clear definition of the question to study, to knowing the state-of-the-art of the issue being addressed, judging the best action and pathway to answer the question, presenting a solid discussion of the results, and finally, stating a conclusion that answers the study question.

PROESA manages four lines of research: 1)Providing care for adults with chronic non-transmissible illnesses, 2) Providing care for adults with acute and critical illnesses, 3) Technology in adult health, and 4) Work dynamics in adult health.

With the purpose of meeting the broad spectrum of clinical research, PROESA faced the need to use different tools that would capture situations of interest to Nursing.

The challenge to obtain, in an objective fashion, the attributes of different themes regarding patients, relatives, and health professionals motivated the development and adaptation of health assessment questionnaires, which, once validated, permitted researchers to better understand the situation being studied, thus supporting more effective nursing interventions.

In terms of variable measurement, special attention is given to the collection of psychosocial data that are reliable, valid, unbiased, and sensitive to the constructs. While there is no such thing as a perfect method, there is recognition that some are more appropriate to realize the reality of a certain phenomenon.

Statistics has a vital role in building psychosocial measurement instruments. The Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, abbreviation in Portuguese), by means of PRODOC (a support program for institutional projects of recent PhDs), invested in recently qualified doctors as fellowship-holders with graduate programs, and promoted publications resulting from that support, resulting in a PRODOC fellowship to develop the project Technologies for measuring physiologic and cognitive-behavioral variables in Adult Health.

This opportunity permitted the hiring of a professional with skills in statistics, namely, Dr. Eutália Aparecida Cândido de Araújo, who was the consultant in the construction and validation of measurement instruments developed in PROESA, some of which are presented in this special issue of the Journal.

Through this publication of instruments validated by PROESA advisors, the Program fulfills its role of promoting research in Nursing, and makes the results available to healthcare practitioners aiming at quality care.

The instruments presented herein are not exclusively directed to researchers. On the contrary, they are aimed at practitioners because they permit evaluation of data obtained from patients, professionals, and students through scientific methods for assessing patients or a situation to support interventions that promote a better quality of life at work.

In addition to the instruments in this special issue, two articles are highlighted, which were written by a renowned researcher who has made great contributions to PROESA. These two articles, one about Psychometrics and the other about Item Response Theory synthesize the theoretical foundations for developing measurement instruments.

PROESA, in accomplishing this initiative, has fulfilled its role in sharing the greatness of this research with health professionals, and, at the same time, is proud to make this research accessible for Nursing in Brazil.

We acknowledge and thank Prof. Dr. Miako Kimura and Prof. Dr. Diná Monteiro da Cruz, coordinators of this issue, as also all the researchers, authors of papers that strengthen the Program. We give a special thank you to Dr. Eutália Aparecida Cândido de Araújo, holder of a PRODOC fellowship, who suddenly left us after nearly four years of daily work, leaving us with deep thoughts about human finitude.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  23 Mar 2010
• Date of issue
  Dec 2009