NURS FPX 4000 Assessment 2 Applying Research Skills

Applying Research Skills

Student Name

Capella University

Nurs FPX4000

Professor Name

Submission Date

NURS FPX 4000 Assessment 2 is about applying research skills to a real healthcare issue. Stigma associated with mental health is a major problem in the healthcare systems across the globe. It causes adverse effects on patients, providers, and the outcome of treatment. To establish specific interventions, there is a need to comprehend the causes of stigma and its effects. This paper aims to discuss mental health stigma among health care students and professionals. The research on the way to reduce stigma and enhance care is discussed in a research paper with annotations.

Mental Health Stigma: A Widespread Healthcare Issue

The mental illness stigma phenomenon is one that has crept into the health care system, and to the detriment of individuals with a mental illness. There are a number of different forms of mental illness stigma, and these are as follows: public stigma, structural stigma, and self-stigma. Public stigma can be defined as the negative attitudes, discrimination, and stereotypes of society, but structural stigma is the aspects in which some groups of people with a mental condition are not preferred in the prevailing policy or system environment.

Self-stigma merely involves the internalisation of societal prejudice in people, and this will result in feelings of shame, uselessness, or self-worth, and inability to pursue treatment (Dubreucq et al., 2021). Such barriers also encouraged and supported people not to participate actively in treatment, or even not to participate, and this aggravated their issues. An example is a depressed individual opting to reject medication and psychological help because he feels afraid of being labeled weak or unstable, and his condition consequently gets out of hand and can even lead to his even higher level of suicidality.

Professional Relevance in Healthcare Settings

It is also an urgent problem in patient-centered care since this could impact the quality and equity of care. Such prejudices of the mentally ill on the subconscious may be common in health care providers and impact the diagnosis, treatment, and the entire gamut of the relationships with mentally ill patients (Crapanzano et al., 2023). An example is the patient who presents with anxiety symptoms and chronic pain, who may not be detected or misdiagnosed because it is thought that he or she has a mental rather than a physical illness.

These prejudices may postpone the treatment and produce a general loss of trust in patients. Destigmatising the mental health issue is therefore essential in relation to better treatment of the patients, better rapport between the provider and the patient, as well as the creation of a more supportive health system. In the case of nurses, there are three aspects, specifically, advocacy, education, and evidence-based compassionate care, where nurses can contribute to the issue of stigma.

Process for Selecting Peer-Reviewed Articles

The methods by which the peer-reviewed journal articles selection process was applied in academic research over the selected healthcare issue of stigma towards mental illness in healthcare students and professionals were performed in a few steps. I started by developing my research problem and delineating the concepts of it, like stigma attached to mental illness, self-disclosure, the educational intervention, and the philosophy of caregivers or healthcare students. To narrow my search down, I relied on Boolean operators and AND and OR to further search for keywords such as a mental illness stigma AND health-care students and educational intervention AND mental health and medical education.

In order to locate peer-reviewed publications, I used academic databases, i.e., PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Scopus. The largest issue was that the results on the simple keywords (e.g., mental health or education) are excessive, and I had to conduct a filter on the keywords, the publication year, population, and type of study filter to leave out the systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and mixed-methods grants. I, too, did not have access to full-text, but conquered it by means of institutional memberships also preferred the open-access journals.

Assessment of Source Credibility and Relevance

Judgment of authorship, media of publication, the nature of research, and the fact that the sources were peer reviewed were used to judge the credibility of the sources selected. The publications of all the articles are in well-known peer-reviewed scholarly journals, including those of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, BMC Psychiatry, and Perspectives on Medical Education, so scholarly integrity is guaranteed. This guest’s academic honesty. The scientists were professionals in the sphere of psychiatry, community health, and medical education, which guaranteed the validity of the investigations. Relevance has also been attained, considering that each of the sources has been associated with the health problem: mental health stigma among health professionals and students.

The 5 major areas of interest in the research included educational interventions, perception of stigma, and help-seeking. The most important assumptions included evidence-based, generalizable studies published in peer-reviewed journals, and the study topic of healthcare students is applicable to clinical practice (Raby and McNaughton, 2021). It was also assumed that evidence-based interventions that resulted in attitudinal change should also correlate with behavior change; some sources showed inconsistencies in the long-term effects of interventions.

Annotated Bibliography

This study is a cross-sectional study of the prevalence of stigma towards mental illness among 927 final year health science students of Spanish Universities and Chilean colleges. The researchers have applied MICA-2 and MICA-4 scales, which show that the findings of the study indicate that there is a greater expression of stigma among medical and nursing students than among students of psychology and occupational therapy. The attitude was highly variable across different courses, genders, and exposure to mental illness. It was found that the level of stigma was higher in biomedical courses, and the authors recommended early education with a psychosocial focus to reduce the bias.

The present study did not have a longitudinal component; it is not clear how long the attitudes will be maintained. It also did not test specific anti-stigma interventions or types of stigma (e.g., internal or institutional). Furthermore, the instruments used in this study (Spanish version) had not been validated, and cultural issues were not fully discussed. These limitations suggest that further research, with the appropriate measures, to test interventions and longitudinal research to assess the change in the stigma levels, and the methods used to reduce the stigma, should follow.

A systematic review and meta-analysis study identified 20 studies, of which there were 10 studies that were included in the meta-analysis and reviewed the impact of web educational interventions on mental health literacy, stigma, and help-seeking attitudes of adolescents. The results showed a remarkable effect on mental health literacy (SMD = 0.70), but limited or negligible effects on stigma (SMD = -0.20) and help-seeking attitudes (SMD = 0.48). While the interventions appear to promise more knowledge, their impact in reducing stigma and improving help-seeking attitudes is uncertain. A point to be debated when referring to the present review was its aim to include all young people, but not health science students, which limits its application to health science education.

The biggest limitation was the lack of follow-up; most of the studies carried out follow-up immediately after the end of the intervention, and the uncertainty of the sustainability of the results was evident. What’s more, the self-reported data could have resulted in social desirability. The review did not answer the question of whether the positive attitudes were translated into actions; this is a critical gap in the literature and should be looked at in future research to identify the potential impact of online interventions on mental health participation.

The systematic review evaluated 25 randomized controlled trials (RCTs and cluster RCTs) of the effectiveness of education interventions to reduce stigma of mental illness in health-care professionals and students. This cohort included workshops and lectures (including contact-based and online). The findings found that education intervention has been effective in changing attitudes, and these have been strengthened by contact with people with lived experience. Surprisingly, single short sessions had the same impact as multiple sessions, and it is more economical to reduce stigma in this way.

But the review had several limitations: there were no studies to judge the impact of attitude change on behaviour change in their practice; no measures of long-term outcomes; and no studies on the effect of interventions on long-term behaviour and clinical performance. The review also did not have representation of studies in low-resource settings, and did not address the impact of the interaction of stigma with race, gender, and roles in health care. Also, most studies did not have the patient voice, and could not determine whether attitude change by providers translated into a higher quality experience of care.

Reflection on the Annotated Bibliography Process and Future Research

The experience of producing an annotated bibliography on the stigma of mental health in educational healthcare settings has helped to enhance my knowledge of the issue and my ability to critically engage with academic literature. Through this practice, I also learned how to assess the strengths, weaknesses, and applicability of different research designs (cross-sectional-survey designs, systematic-review designs, mixed-method designs). For instance, the article by Masedo et al. (2021) alerted me to the variations of stigma in health professions and populations, while Chee et al. (2024) noted the positive results of contact-based interventions in reducing stigma.

The annotated bibliography also made me aware of the limitations of the studies, including a lack of longitudinal data, monitoring of behavior in real life, and cultural context. This exercise has also improved my skills in selecting high-quality evidence for further assessment and during the examination of the intervention’s outcomes. To this extent, I will use this approach for presenting evidence in policy papers or capstone projects because it provides a clear and meaningful summary and critique of research in a systematic fashion.

Conclusion

The use of an annotated bibliography has enhanced my research, critical thinking, and evaluation skills. It gave me more insights into mental health stigma in the health service and education. It makes you identify a credible source and the suitability of the research methodology. It will be very useful for my future academic and professional work. It gives me an idea to be sure in selecting and synthesising evidence to implement evidence-based practices.

To get the 3rd (next) assessment of class NURS-4000 visit: NURS FPX 4000 Assessment 3