Research Summary and Ethical Considerations

Research Critique Name: Institution:  Problem statement In the recent past there have been a lot of concerns growing as regards support worker in healthcare. Most of them have been extending their practice towards tasks that should only be carried out by the registered professional nurses and midwives (Griffiths & Robinson, 2010). The support workers have been engaging in the midwifery and nursing tasks which involve direct clinical practices, posing serious health risks to the patients and themselves, as they are not trained in these fields. Other than the clinical and health risks that this poses, these practices are not regulated. Therefore, this means that even those that are taking the profession are not being regulated properly, through any form of standardization, especially on the roles that they should play as well as their education and competence levels (NHSEmployers, 2013). The recent years have seen a growing number of proposals brought forward, which promise smooth transition into the regulation process, using diversified modes and levels of regulation protocols. Purpose and Research Questions The sole purpose of carrying out this research is defined in several aims. This will help with the regulation of the support workers in healthcare. One of the aims that the research looks to establish is the extent of health risks that the public is exposed to, from these unregulated support workers taking up the roles of the registered nurses and midwives. This is also hinged to the benefits that the system will derive from the regulation process (Griffiths & Robinson, 2010). In a bid to develop models that are going to best work during the regulation of the practice, the research also aims at identifying some of the key queries that will be considered, to come up with the most practical models. Furthermore, the research will recommend to the health authorities, on the most preferable ways that it can apply in the future as regards the regulation of the healthcare support workers throughout the country. The issues of developing the models to be used in the regulation of the support workers are based on several questions to guide the determination process. First the team has to determine if they want to move forward with the regulation by setting the support healthcare workers as a second class of the nurses that are qualified or as senior staff workers, considering that the services that they offer are autonomously substitutive. The other question involves the roles and the competencies that these support workers are supposed to play after the regulation process. As regards the competencies, they also need to determine if they can group the various competency levels in a hierarchical order, with specified roles to play (Griffiths & Robinson, 2010). They will also need to pay close attention to the generic and specified competencies, with defined boarders stating the extents to which the support workers can spread their services. This means there has to be clear guidelines, outlining the issues regarding delegation, accountability and all the responsibilities for the support workers and the registered midwives and nurses. There is also the question of the right regulator to be chosen along with the right regulatory procedures that era to be set up in the revolution process. Moving in the direction of the regulation, it was necessary that the research answers the question on how the workers would be provided with the education they needed as well as how the education would be accredited. As such the regulation process would be required to have some form of application for the support workers to fill, for the purposes of recruitment as well as retention. The research would have to answer to questions of the risks likely to be brought about by the process of regulating the support workers, the public healthcare quality and the effects on other professionals that rely on the services that the support workers provide. As for the relation between the research problem and the research ...