In choosing between either experimental or quasi-experimental design for quality improvement, I would prefer to choose an experimental design for quality improvement.

Response for two these discussion. Responses should be respectful, and also have some substance to them (minimum of 150 words for each one).

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In choosing between either experimental or quasi-experimental design for quality improvement, I would prefer to choose an experimental design for quality improvement. The reason why I chose to help me in regards to quality improvement is because it is a true experiment design that involves pretest, posttest control group design. It is an alter-only design which means that you are able to tweak and manipulate the way to design is handled.

Experimental designs are the most powerful for testing cause and effect relationships due to the control, manipulation and randomization components, according to the chapter; the design offers a better chance of measuring if the intervention caused the change or difference in the two groups. A great strength in the experimental design for quality improvement would be if one was working in a clinic for a certain population, you would have to consider the evidence at a starting point for putting research findings into a clinical practice. Furthermore, experimental design for qualitative research does also have several weaknesses. The designs tend to be more complicated and can be very costly to run. An example from the text of a weak design would be “that there may not be an adequate number of potential study participants in the accessible population.” (Gerri Loboiondo-Wood and Judith Haber, 2022). With these certain studies, they may be difficult or impractical to provide in a clinical setting. With such weaknesses like these, researchers frequently turn to another type of research design to seek out a different type of cause and effect relationship for quality improvement design.

With all of that being said, the problem that I would like to improve on as apart of the quality, I would like to improve on are CAUTIs. CAUTIs seem to be an on going theme in hospitals and with using experimental data, I am able to use certain design patterns to adequately integrate them into my research. I am able to manipulate, control, and randomize the scenario to identify certain properties amongst CAUTIs in the hospital.

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CAUTIs are catheter associated urinary tract infections and they are preventable when foleys are inserted properly in the hospital setting and taken care of with the necessary tools. I am choosing to apply an experimental design to this clinical problem. An experimental design has three different parts to it randomization, control, and manipulation. To put randomization to CAUTIs I would select random patients who had catheters placed during their current hospital stay and add them to the design in either group A or B. A being the control group and B being the manipulation group. For the control group they are going to get the care that has been shown to keep bacteria from entering the body and keeping a UTI from developing in the patient. This specific care is using the wipes that are made for caring for catheters. The other group is the group that is being manipulated. In this group, the patient’s catheter are going to be cleaned with just water and no other elements are going to be added. Using these two different types of care is going to show which way is better for caring catheters. Some strengths of doing this design is being able to compare the two different groups to each other and seeing the results that way. Another strength would be being able to have other nurses and hospital staff helping out in the study and making sure it is being done the way it needs to be done. A weakness that can come from the experimental design is not having enough patients to create the two different groups in the hospital while trying to create this design. Another weakness that can come up is money. Catheter placement and care can become expensive when caring for so many patients at one time. Overall, both studies are great when trying to look into quality issues. It really depends on the issue at hand which one needs to be picked.