2 – Assignment Paper

Appraising the Evidence and Creating an Evaluation Table

This assignment will help you take the next step in translating research to practice. An RCA must be done on all articles from the literature search that at first blush seemed appropriate to answer your PICOT question: For adults greater than 65 years of age in the retirement community (P) does an exercise program (I) compared to no exercise program (C) decrease fall rates (O) within one year? Your literature search most likely resulted in over one hundred articles. Reviewing all of them, while appropriate when creating your own quality improvement (QI) project, is not the most efficient use of time. Since the purpose of this assignment is to learn the process of appraising the evidence and creating an Evaluation Table, you will be provided with results from a pared-down literature search for this assignment that is related to the topic you have been working on. The reference list of 7 literature search studies is uploaded. You will use these studies for the assignment this week.

Tasks:
This week, you will focus on appraising the quantitative studies in the provided reference list only, reviewing them, and objectively assessing their value for the intervention for your project.
You will then summarize the studies in the Evaluation Table, which will provide a snapshot of the external evidence. For now, your focus is on setting up an Evaluation Table and adding the quantitative evidence. The RCA or rapid critical assessment file contains 7 checklists to choose from depending on the type of study. I will upload those directly to the writer as this part only allows 3 uploads.

To prepare for the assignment:

1. Complete RCAs of the 7 quantitative studies only from the Reference List using the appropriate RCA checklists.
2. Develop an Evaluation Table that includes the quantitative studies you have appraised.
Use the Evaluation Table Template, a Microsoft Word document has been uploaded.
Refer to the table on pages 44–45 in the following article as an example of how to set up your Evaluation Table:
Reference: Fineout-Overholt, E., Melnyk, B. M., Stillwell, S. B., & Williamson,K. M. (2010). Critical appraisal of the evidence: Part III. American Journal of Nursing, 110(11), 43–51.

Final submission details, include the following:
Copies of the RCA checklists for the 7 quantitative studies in one document.
An evaluation table that includes the 7 quantitative studies.
Sources are the 7 articles in the reference list.