As a nurse manager at an emergency department, I frequently face cases when discussing an issue with employees that may lead to the appearance of misleading information and conflict situations. The concept of the faulty recall of a shared experience was described in an experiment performed by Loftus and Zanni in 1974. The researchers concluded that eyewitness testimony might be prejudiced based on the fact that the questions given to respondents could contain misleading data. Another possible explanation of faulty recall was that people’s memory could be altered with the help of word choice.
According to Sekaran and Bougie, a crucial concept of managerial work is knowing how research can help in analyzing the situations occurring within the professional environment. Out of the eight hallmarks of scientific research, the following three seem to be most helpful in resolving problems in a healthcare organization: purposiveness, rigor, and parsimony. In my practice, I recently had a problem with nurse turnover. I set a goal to find out the reason for high turnover in accordance with the hallmark of purposiveness. This approach allowed me to identify the focus of my research.
Then, I had to provide the rigor of research. To ensure the highest reliability of my project, I asked each nurse within the department what working conditions might lead to turnover they considered the most unbearable. As Sekaran and Bougie mention, parsimony enables the manager to find the best solutions through interviewing the workers. With the help of parsimony, I was able to identify that nurses tend to feel exhausted because of long shifts that had been introduced several months before. Thus, the use of three hallmarks of scientific research and the knowledge of the concept of faulty recall helped me to identify the problem and eliminate it by discussing the length of shifts with the hospital administration.
