Where do you find scholarly articles that you read on a regular basis? Search a scholarly database such
as CINAHL, which is available in the CCN online
... [Show More] library. Choose a topic of interest to you and your
practice and find a scholarly article. Write a short paragraph about what you learned in the article and
include a properly formatted citation in APA format.
Scholarly articles are found in sites such as CINAHL, PubMed, MEDSCAPE, OXFORD
Journals, University Libraries, and many others. Until a few days ago, I found out the Google
Scholar was another source. I have heard of all these while doing my MBA and BSN. Some of
these databases require a membership and some even charge for the articles. Having access to
these via Chamberlain College of Nursing is such an invaluable resource.
PubMed was the database I used to search for “pressure ulcers and the Braden Scale”. In the list
of results, I clicked on an article called “Predictive Validity of the Braden Scale for Patients in
Intensive Care Units”. I belong to Homestead’s Hospital Wound Care Committee and I am
always interested in things that can improve patient care outcomes in regards to pressure ulcer
prevention and care.
In 2013, Hyung, Vermillion, Newton, Fall, Li, Kaewprag, Moffatt-Bruce and Lenz published a
study where they wanted to assess the legitimacy of the Braden scale for predicting the risk for
development of pressure ulcers in patients who were in the intensive care unit. They used the
patient’s electronic health record and 4 years of its data. The method used by Hyung et al. (2013)
was to excerpt the health records and measure validity by using “sensitivity, specificacity,
positive predictive value, and negative predictive value”. (p. 1-2).
7790 patients were part of the analysis and 16 was the cutoff Braden scale score. The end result
was that the Braden scale showed “insufficient predictive validity and poor accuracy” (p. 2). The
ICU patients’ characteristics did not reflect in the Braden scale. Hyung at al. (2013) concluded
that there needs to be more research in order to define the unique factors of ICU patients in order
to increase the effectiveness of the Braden scale pressure ulcer prediction in those patients [Show Less]