The purpose behind Nguyene, Thao-Houane, & Warren’s article was to describe the role of OT as a part of a multidisciplinary team in an oncology ISU. The role of OT is determined by the complex physical and psychosocial needs of the patients in the unit and requires providing comprehensive care to individuals with long-term and short-term functional deficits. It is suggested that as a part of the multidisciplinary team OTs operate according to a certain algorithm in order to achieve greater effectiveness in care. ICU Adult ICU Early Mobilization Algorithm came as a result of an intervention that included a number of early mobilization activities, all of which aimed at improving patient mobilization. Data collected in a follow-up study showed that patients who received the intervention with the focus on early mobilization better progressed in mobility, ability of self-care, and had a shorter length of stay at the unit.
The article has both strengths and weaknesses. Its strengths are its clear statement of the problem, logical organization, and representation. In particular, Nguyene, Thao-Houane, & Warren state in which ways OTs are indispensable to the operation of ISU and say that there is a need to make OTs’ care even more effective as a part of the multidisciplinary team. Also, the article is logically organized. The authors begin by outlining the role of OTs in ISUs and describing the specifics of providing care to ISU patients; then they focus on a specific intervention that took place in their ISU; further, they describe how they derived the algorithm based on the recoded sequence of interventions they made. The article ends with the summary which clearly states that the authors have shared the results of their intervention in order to inform about one of the ways to arrange ISU’s staff work. In addition, the article has good illustrations, which help go through the text. For example, it features graphics, photos of patients and OTs, and even provides a case example of Glenn in a separate box.
Apart from the strengths, the article has its weaknesses. First of all, it does not have a good literature review. The authors fail to show how much they are aware of the current research on the issue and whether their research will some gap in research. The literature review in the first paragraph of the article is very short and contains references only to eight studies without saying in detail what sort of studies they are. It is unclear if any qualitative and quantitative studies have been done on the problem. Another weakness is a limited range of references. The authors list only 8 sources in References section. Further, the authors do not clearly say what their research question was. Neither do they describe the sample and method of their research. The research is a qualitative study, but the authors do not explain why they have chosen this approach. Another weakness is that the authors do not explain which tools they have used to collect and analyze the data. It seems as if their findings about the effectiveness of the intervention were based on the subjective views of the medical staff but not on accurate data. Additionally, there is no discussion of the findings with regard to current sources. Some other weaknesses of the article is a lack of discussion of the limitations and a lack of the ethical approval.
Conclusion
Overall, this article has its strengths and its weaknesses. However, it seems that there are more weaknesses in it. I recommend serious improvements in a range of issues: literature review, method and sample description, discussion, limitations, and ethical committee approval.
- Nguyene, V., Thao-Houane, T., & Warren, L. (2014). Early mobilization. OT Practice, 19 (16), 15-19.
