Development of critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia: 10 years' perspective

Ahmad M Deeb; Maha Hamdan Aljuaid

doi:10.4103/sccj.sccj_56_20

REVIEW ARTICLE

Year : 2020 | Volume : 4 | Issue : 4 | Page : 119-122

Development of critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia: 10 years' perspective

Ahmad M Deeb, Maha Hamdan Aljuaid
Clinical Trial Services, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center; King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences; Ministry of the National Guard - Health Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Date of Submission	07-Oct-2020
Date of Acceptance	13-Dec-2020
Date of Web Publication	31-Dec-2020

Correspondence Address:
Ahmad M Deeb
King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Ministry of the National Guard - Health Affairs, Riyadh
Saudi Arabia

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

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DOI: 10.4103/sccj.sccj_56_20

Abstract

Nursing research is a scientific method that provides evidence to support nursing practices. Investigation of the critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia has not been well established. This review aims to examine the numbers, and the characteristics of PubMed-cited critical care nursing articles contributed from Saudi Arabia over the past decade. We conducted a PubMed search to analyze nursing publications in the field of critical care published or contributed in Saudi Arabia for over 10 years (2010–2019). We investigated the number of publications per year, specialty, study design, journal impact factor, and international collaboration. A total of 94 critical care nursing publications were included in this review. International collaborations were noted in 49 (52.1%) articles. The majority 53 (56.4%) of the critical care nursing publications were related to the nursing field and 66 (70.2%) of these articles were classified as clinical practice topics. Observation cohort study was the most used study design 64 (68.1%). The median impact factor for the journals of these publications was 1.76 (1.48, 2.52). Despite the lower rate of published researches, critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia is increasing over the years. International collaborations had contributed dramatically in the published articles. Developing local strategy for critical care nursing research and promoting local and international collaboration to conduct and use research according to the critical care nursing priority are also warranted. More interventional nursing researches are needed in critical care settings in Saudi Arabia.

Keywords: Critical care, intensive care units, nursing, research, Saudi Arabia

How to cite this article:
Deeb AM, Aljuaid MH. Development of critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia: 10 years' perspective. Saudi Crit Care J 2020;4:119-22

How to cite this URL:
Deeb AM, Aljuaid MH. Development of critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia: 10 years' perspective. Saudi Crit Care J [serial online] 2020 [cited 2023 Mar 29];4:119-22. Available from: https://www.sccj-sa.org/text.asp?2020/4/4/119/305822

Introduction

Critical care nursing aims to provide nursing care to a broad spectrum of critically ill patients such as injured patients, post-operative patients, or those at risk of life-threatening diseases. These patients often require frequent hemodynamic monitoring and/or supportive care for failing organs. Critical care nursing encompasses various specialties for different age groups such as adults, pediatrics, and neonates. Critical care nurses provide care in various intensive care settings, including medical/surgical intensive care units (ICUs), specialized neuro-ICU, trauma ICU, cardiac ICU, burn ICU, and transplant and oncology ICU.

Critical care settings often involve complex environments and various acuity levels of care; ICUs are considered high-risk areas with a high probability of error occurrence.^[1] Such environments require highly qualified, knowledgeable, and trained nurses.^[2],[3] Besides, critical care nurses should master research skills to support them in providing a high quality of care based on up-to-date evidence-based recommendations. Nurses need research to keep up with growing knowledge and advanced technologies. Furthermore, nurses have a professional and academic commitment to conduct nursing research to increase the scientific knowledge of clinical nursing.

Research provides theoretical and scientific basis for nursing care. It is essential to develop empirical knowledge, find new treatments/protocols, and improve patient care.^[4] Nursing research is a method of providing evidence used to support nursing practices.^[4],[5] It may involve validating existing knowledge or developing new knowledge that enables nurses to provide evidence-based care.

In Saudi Arabia, critical care research had been improving significantly over the past 20 years.^[6] Currently, enhancing and providing efficient role in critical sectors such as research are a core part of the National Vision 2030.^[7] Investigation of critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia has not been recently discussed. In this review, we examine the number, and the characteristics of PubMed-cited critical care nursing articles contributed from Saudi Arabia over the past ten years.

Methods

To determine the number of nursing research articles as published or contributed from Saudi Arabia for the period between 2010 and 2019, we conducted a PubMed search using the following search keywords: Kingdome of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Saudi Arabia, Saudi, nurse, and nursing. Further, we added the following keywords to determine the number of critical care nursing articles for the same period: critical care, critical ill, critically ill, intensive care, ICU, CCU, and intermediate care unit (IMCU).

We determine the eligible articles by reviewing the affiliations, titles, and abstracts. We classified the articles according to country: “Saudi Arabia” if all authors from Saudi Arabia or “international” if authors from different countries and at least one author is from Saudi Arabia. In addition, we classified the articles according to specialty: “nursing articles” or “multidisciplinary articles.” Furthermore, articles were classified according to the field: “clinical practice” if the articles were directly related to patient clinical care or “academic” if the articles were related to public health, nursing education, nursing management, or social topics. We collected information about the study design and journal impact factor.

Results

Our search identified 1139 nursing researches published or contributed from Saudi Arabia in the period from 2010 to 2019 [Figure 1]. In addition, we identified 121 articles related to critical care nursing research. However, after reviewing these articles, 27 articles were excluded because they were not nursing and noncritical care, or there was no contribution from Saudi Arabia. The total number of eligible articles was 94, representing 8.4% of all nursing articles [Figure 1].

Figure 1: Number of nursing researches to critical nursing researches in Saudi Arabia over 10 years

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As illustrated in [Table 1], the majority 53 (56.4) of these articles were related to the nursing field and 66 (70.2%) of these articles were classified as clinical practice articles. We identified 49 (52.1%) articles published as international cooperation. An observational cohort study was the most used study design 64 (68.1), followed by review articles (13, 13.8%) and interventional design (10, 10.6%). Qualitative research was used in 6 (6.4%) articles. The majority of articles were published with journals that have official impact factor (63, 67%) with a median (Q1, Q3) of 1.76 (1.48, 2.52).

Table 1: Characteristics of critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia over 10 years

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Discussion

In this review, we described the ten years' perspective of critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia.

Our results revealed that only 8.4% of PubMed-published nursing researches were related to critical care field. This small percentage showed low critical care nursing research activities in comparison to other research fields in Saudi Arabia^[6] or with critical care nursing researches in other countries.^[8] However, critical care nursing research is trending up over the years in the Kingdom. Studying the barriers toward conducting critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia is an integral step to understand this phenomenon. Few research studies suggested certain recommendations to overcome the barriers of conducting nursing research in Saudi Arabia. These recommendations include: providing research training and mentorship, allocating funds and time to conduct research, and increasing regional research collaboration and participation in nursing conferences.^[9],[10] Besides, nurses' involvement in specialized local and international critical care research groups or organizations may foster nurses' engagement to contribute more into nursing and multidisciplinary clinical research.^{[11],[12],[13]}

International collaborations were contributed to more than half of the critical care nursing articles in Saudi Arabia. In addition, 43.6% of these articles have been conducted in collaboration with other disciplines. These outcomes encourage nurses to collaborate internally and externally to produce future researches.

Our results showed that the majority of critical care nursing researches in Saudi Arabia were published in peer-reviewed journals that have an official impact factor. This may indicate a high quality of published critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia. However, this may be biased by using a search engine (PubMed) because most of the journals indexed in PubMed are peer-reviewed.

The majority of the published critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia were pure nursing research focused on clinical practice topics. This is expected in such a complex and demanding setting compared to other clinical nursing settings,^[14] where the continuous monitoring for critically ill patients is crucial. Nevertheless, critical care nursing researchers should be aware of up-to-date critical care nursing research priorities.^[15] Focusing on research priorities will help unify efforts to reduce the gaps in knowledge and inform the best practice.

In the current studies, the quantitative design was the dominant approach. The observational cohort was the most used research design in critical care nursing research. These results are comparable to the previous literature results in different Arab countries^[14],[16] but are not comparable with other developed countries in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches are utilized.^[17] Our review showed a limited number of interventional researches or randomized controlled trials. Similarly, Sweileh et al. concluded that nursing randomized controlled trials were very limited in Arab countries.^[10] This may be related to the lack of experience in conducting clinical trials, lack of allocated time, and lack of fund, as well as lack of understanding of the regulations for such studies.^[10] It can also be due to decreased public knowledge and awareness about clinical trials.^[10],[18] In critical care, conducting interventional studies is a vital step to determine the best evidence to practice.

Our review results should be interpreted considering its strengths and weaknesses. To our knowledge, this is the first study that reviews a 10-year critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia. Using a single database (PubMed) is the main limitation of this study. Increasing the number of search engines and databases may increase the number of studies. Nevertheless PubMed is one of the most widely accessible and reliable biomedical resources globally.^[19]

Conclusion

As “clinical practice” is the predominant focus in critical care nursing research, the Saudi critical care nurses publishing mainly in peer-reviewed journals. Despite the lower publishing rate, critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia is increasing over the years. Studying the barriers toward conducting critical care nursing research in Saudi Arabia is recommended to increase future researches. Developing a local strategy for critical care nursing research and promoting local and international collaboration to conduct research are also warranted. More interventional nursing researches are needed in critical care settings in Saudi Arabia.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

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