Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
the Department was identified as being “Multi-cultural”, which is
also representative of the local community. 15 External
stakeholders were identified, classified according to the services
they represented, and invited to join the curriculum development
team. Amongst these were representatives of both the public and
private sectors, as the institutions governed by these authorities
could be potential employers for the new graduates and
simultaneously were in the best position to identify the needs of the
service providers in these sectors (Interview with Project Sponsors,
6 th October 2006). This demonstrated the Department’s
commitment to meet with stakeholders from all the groups
involved.
Background to the research project
The satisfying end to the process of collaboration was the new
Bachelor of Nursing curriculum that was accredited in August 2005.
The next step in the process of quality control was to initiate a
research project to determine the satisfaction of the stakeholders
who participated in creating this new curriculum. It was at this
point that I was asked to conduct the research as an independent
person.
Ethical Issues
A research proposal was submitted to the Manukau Institute of
Technology ethics committee in May 2006 by the Deputy Head of
the Department of Nursing and Health Studies. The application was
approved before the project commenced.
Due to the fact that Mäori people participated in developing the
curriculum, they were included in the project as potential
stakeholders. The protocols involving Mäori stakeholders as well as
individual interviews with Mäori People were included in detail in the
application submitted to the ethical committee, and strictly adhered
to during the interviewing process. The Research Kaiawhina was
involved in the process, thus causing the fact that not all
researchers were fluent in Mäori languages to be unproblematic.
After analysing the interviews, the analyses were sent to all the
stakeholders by email, with the request, that they indicate their
agreement with the transcript and the analysis of their particular
interview. This method can be seen as triangulation of the
interpreted data to enhance the credibility and confirmability of the
analysed data. The stakeholders replied in the affirmative to this
request.
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