[ANSWER]Clinical Question – Effectiveness of Personal Protective Equipment in Infection Prevention in Neutropenic Patients: What Does the Evidence Say?

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Personal Protective Equipment in Infection Prevention in Neutropenic Patients

To answer my clinical question, I searched for scholarly literature on Google Scholar, an easily accessible online database that offers free access to credible scholarly articles on a wide range of disciplines, including medicine and nursing. Besides easy and free access, Google Scholar is a useful database as it ranks results based on relevance. In other words, the most relevant results are shown first. I used the following search phrases in my search process: neutropenia/neutropenic, admitted cancer patients, chemotherapy, risk, healthcare associated infections, effectiveness/efficacy, personal protective equipment, and prevention.

From the very beginning, my aim was to obtain current evidence on the efficacy of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) in reducing HAI risk in neutropenic cancer patients following chemotherapy. As such, I narrowed the time horizon of my search to 2010-2020. As new clinical evidence keeps emerging, considering the latest evidence in any area of clinical practice is usually recommended. The initial search returned more than 2,000 results, a number that was higher than I initially anticipated.

As Google Scholar ranks results in terms of relevance, I skimmed through the first few pages reading titles in an effort to select the most relevant articles. I paid particular attention to titles depicting the use of PPE in preventing HAIs in cancer patients with chemotherapy-induced neutropenia. After skimming, I located 24 potential articles. I then subjected the potential articles to more rigorous evaluation, whereby I considered their abstracts, content, list of references, and medium of publication (I considered only articles published in peer-reviewed journals). Following a thorough analysis, five articles were finally selected for consideration: 1 primary…[Buy Full Answer for Just USD 9: 2612 WORDS]

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Type: Essay

Word Count: 2612

Grade/Mark: 95 (Distinction)

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