Not all healthcare research applies to you.

 DISCLAIMER: This blog in no way includes recommendations for healthcare choices.  Before making any changes to a recommended plan of care or medications, consult your healthcare provider.

Hello readers!  I am a healthcare professional, specifically interested in healthcare issues affecting adults 60+ years of age.  As I finish my last year (hopefully) of post-grad nursing school, I have chosen to produce a blog that brings current research, relevant to older adults, to the public eye. My assignment is to read a single issue of a healthcare journal each month, translate one of the articles into plain language, and post the summary to my blog.  I will be learning along with you.

 It is my wish that this blog will be a resource for adults to know what healthcare issues are being researched and the limitations of research being published.  All current healthcare research uses a carefully chosen group of volunteers, which means that the conclusions of an article can not be applied to everyone.  Have you heard the phrase "everyone is a snowflake" meaning everyone is different?  In order to link cause to effect, the group of volunteers participating in the research study have to have as many personal characteristics in common as possible (Schira, 2014).

Take for example a researcher who wants to find out if bright light therapy reduces depression symptoms better than an antidepressant medication.  To get useful information the volunteers in the group using bright light therapy must not be using an antidepressant.  If the volunteers using bright light therapy were also on an antidepressant then it would be impossible to know if it was the bright light therapy or the antidepressant that reduced the depression.  Because each group of volunteers can only be using one thing to treat depression, the results of the study only tell us if bright light therapy alone or antidepressants alone work to reduce depression.  This study would not tell us if someone who is already using an antidepressant would get any additional benefit from using bright light therapy.

This is a very basic example of how I look at all research I read.  I look at the characteristics of the volunteers, how many volunteers (the more the better) participated and the stated limitations of the study.

Take away message: Not all healthcare research applies to you, even if it is a study about a drug you are taking.  You have to have similar characteristics to the group of volunteers in the study for the article to directly apply to you.

Reference used for this post is Schira, M. (2014). Appraising a single research article. In M.A. Mateo & M. D. Foreman (Eds), Research for advance practice nurses, (pp 87-99). New York, NY: Springer.