4 Year Nursing Degree Programme (BSc Cur)

NU3E09 Measuring and Reporting on Population Health (5 ECTS)

Learning Outcomes

Following completion of this module the student should be able to:

• Appreciate and understand healthcare research in a community setting
  
• Appreciate and understand the range of study designs available
  
• Select appropriate study designs and know how many participants are needed in study
  
• Understand and compute epidemiologic rates including crude, adjusted and age specific rates in relation to births, mortality, morbidity, immunisations etc.
  
• Understand the difference between prevalence and incidence and describe the different methods for estimating hidden prevalence
  
• Compute relevant confidence intervals, relative risks and odds ratios

Module Learning Aims

With an increasing emphasis on primary healthcare and the role of the nurse and healthcare
professionals in public and community healthcare systems and settings, this module aims to address this
and to introduce students to basic measurements and healthcare studies that can be conducted within a
community setting. The focus of the module will be on study design, measurement and implementation
and on the computation and understanding of statistics and types of measures that arise from these
studies and the implication of results for practice. Real life examples will be used to explore these
concepts and students will hear case studies from practitioners working in public health and community
settings.

Recommended Reading List

• Polit DF, and Beck, C.T. (2010) Essentials of Nursing Research: Appraising Evidence for Nursing Practice. 7th Edition. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins: Philadelphia.
  
• I. Scot and D. Mazhindu. (2005) Statistics for Health Care Professionals; An Introduction. Sage, UK.
  
• R.M.Page, G.E. Cole and T.C. Timmreck, (1995) Basic Epidemiological Methods and Biostatistics, A Practical Guidebook, Jones and Bartlett Publishers
  
• Pallant J. (2007) SPSS Survival Manual: A Step by Step Guide to Data Analysis Using SPSS for Windows (version 15). 3rd Edition. Open University Press: Maidenhead.
  
• Parahoo K (2006) Nursing Research: Principles, Process and Issues. 2nd Edition. Macmillan Press: London.

* Additional readings will be given for each unit of learning.