Recruiting patients with breast cancer and their families to behavioral research in the post-HIPAA period

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES

To describe a process for, response rates of, and indicated interest in recruiting patients with breast cancer and their spouses and family members from a clinical setting into behavioral and psychiatric research studies since the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations have taken effect.

DATA SOURCES

Published articles, books and book chapters, MEDLINE, government agency information and HIPAA regulatory Web sites, and survey data.

DATA SYNTHESIS

Response rates among the three target groups--patients, spouses and partners, and female first-degree relatives--were 77%, 95%, and 88%, respectively. Interest was high in the three target groups, with 77%, 87%, and 65% of responding patients, spouses and partners, and female first-degree relatives, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Taken together, these data indicate that high participation rates can be expected from patients with breast cancer and their families in clinical settings.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING

Regulations pose barriers to patient and family recruitment, but thoughtful systems actually can improve rates of recruitment.

[Evidence-based nursing--the missing link between research and practice]

Evidence-based nursing (EBN) is being introduced promising to professionalize and emancipate nursing. Three questions are discussed as to whether this can be accomplished. The analysis comes to the following conclusions: Evidence-based nursing (EBN) as a problem solving process will become part of the German health care service by means of social legislation. The concept joins clinical experience and best evidence under the principle of patient adapted intervention. This complies with the demand for rationally justified, transparent, and economically comparable performance. One specific trait of research in nursing is the importance of qualitative methods that make the dimension of subjective meaning comprehensible. Only under a normative paradigm can the concept of evidence-based intervention be applied immediately. This leads to problems of adaptation that have to be solved when introducing EBN. Evidence-based nursing practice fits into modern concepts of professional nursing as well as into current visions regarding the reform of German nursing education. However, some peculiarities that characterize German nursing practice in particular must be taken into consideration. This includes the professional ideology of nursing staff as well as applied nursing science, which is still in its beginnings.

CONCLUSION

With careful implementation the concept of evidence-based intervention can develop its potential to improve nursing practice. Further, EBN offers Germany an opportunity to catch up with international standards.

Research, ethics and the data protection legislation

As nursing research becomes more common, so does the issue of whether or not patients should be involved and, if so, to what extent. This article examines how the data protection legislation helps to protect patients, and whether they have the capability to decide to participate, or not.