Evaluation of qualitative research studies

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Abstract
You volunteer to see if any studies have been done on decision making at the end of life. You remember that your institution has an online subscription to Evidence-Based Nursing. You sign in and go to the search screen. In the field “word(s) anywhere in article” you type in “end of life” (in quotations because you are looking for articles that include all 3 words together) and “decision”. 4 matches are found. The first is an abstract entitled “Providers tried to help patients and families make end of life decisions”.1 You review the full text of the abstract, which describes a qualitative study by Norton and Bowers2 that seems to address the issues of interest. You get a copy of the full article from the library so that you can more fully assess the usefulness of this study for your team.