Hi Colleen

First of all good luck with the Thesis, they are painstaking but worth it in the
end, always try and keep in view what you are going to achieve by doing this and
this will help to keep you motivated.

Comments which would have been beneficial to you which have already been
mentioned are related to your narrowing of the focus of your thesis. Many
responding answers have shown the breadth of scenarios and areas you could
consider and you will unfortunately need to concentrate on a aspect
specifically.

Reading articles about stress in relation to the ER often relate to trying to
determine if it is a more stressful environment and therefore studies examine
stress in other environments such as ICU's and general wards. I think you will
find doing a literature search you will come to the conclusion that there has
been a lot of study on stress already in the ED and if you are trying to show it
is a more stessful environment then you maybe wasting your time. The studies I
have read which are by no means extensive, however a couple of them were
literature reviews which I did consider to give a decent evaluation of stress,
suggested that stress is relative to the person and the situation they are in.
The adult nurse who has to do a shift on the paeds ward or the ward nurse
involved in a resuscitation that some ED nurses do daily without stress, are
examples of this "relative stress"

So any way to help you with your study, first of all you need to define what is
stress and what specific aspect of stress do you want to look at. Someone
mentioned Critical Incident Stress Debriefing which was a buzz topic in the mid
90's, its been studied lots and lots and analysis suggests from the studies
measurement tools that it does not reduce stress or create any benefits, however
my adjudication of good research when reading these articles was much different
than it is now.

So you have defined stress and what specific stress you want to examine.

Next step is to do a literature searchand review on that specific type of
stress, has the research been qualitative or quantative? what are measurement
tools used? are they appropriate measurement tools ? will you need to use the
same measurement tools for your study ? What are the findings ? Are the findings
conclusive ? Have the findings led to areas which need to be examined, which you
could possibly work upon ?

After your literature review formulate a question regarding this type of stress
you want to examine amd determine a sample space of who you want to target your
questioning to. As someone has already said, is it going to be quantative or
qualitative, is it docs or nurses, again your literature review may guide you on
this. What resources do you have to use to assist you with quantative and
qualitative analysis? Can you measure what you want quantatively or
quallatatively ?

These are all questions which you should be asking after your literature review.

Rather than keep on going on and being a bore to everyone, best thing is for you
to start doing a literature review, narrow your range of topic and then ask the
list for input as to what they think may provide good points to your research

Good luck

Mark Jones

(Ms Nsg Sc)