A nurse is designing a study to evaluate the effectiveness of preoperative teaching to clients undergoing total knee replacement surgery.
To best identify previous research studies that investigated client teaching effectiveness, what should the nurse do first?

Choice A rationale:

Identify the primary attitudinal factors that the authors described as protecting against smoking. Rationale: This action is most important because it directly addresses the nurse's objective of preparing an anti-smoking campaign for junior high school students. Understanding the primary attitudinal factors that protect against smoking among youth populations can inform the development of effective interventions to reduce smoking in this specific demographic.

Choice B rationale:

Contact the authors and ask for their assistance in developing a curriculum for the anti-smoking campaign. Rationale: While collaborating with the authors could potentially provide valuable insights, the immediate priority is to identify the key attitudinal factors described in the research article. This information forms the foundation for the anti-smoking campaign's content and strategies.

Choice C rationale:

Review the article to determine if institutional review board approval was obtained prior to conducting the study. Rationale: Institutional review board (IRB) approval is important for ethical research, but it is not the nurse's primary concern at this stage. The focus should be on gathering relevant information to inform the campaign.

Choice D rationale:

Determine if any of the studies reviewed by the authors used a junior high school population. Rationale: While understanding the populations studied in the research articles is useful for context, it is not as critical as identifying the specific attitudinal factors that protect against smoking among youth populations, which can directly inform the campaign's development.

Choice A rationale:

Providing all smoking adolescents in the three high schools with Program A is not a justified action based solely on the effectiveness of Program A in this study. While Program A may have shown better results than Program B in this specific context, it does not necessarily mean it's the most effective program overall. Implementing such a decision without further investigation could be premature and may not consider individual variations and preferences among adolescents.

Choice B rationale:

Investigating the effectiveness of other smoking cessation programs is the most appropriate action. While Program A showed better results in this particular study, it's essential to explore a variety of smoking cessation programs to determine the most effective and suitable options for different individuals. Research should continuously seek to improve interventions and provide evidence-based recommendations.

Choice C rationale:

Replicating the study using adolescents from across the United States may not be the best course of action at this stage. The study was conducted in the American southeast, and its findings may not be directly applicable to adolescents from different regions with potentially varying demographics and smoking behaviors. It would be more appropriate to conduct studies or meta-analyses that examine the effectiveness of smoking cessation programs on a broader scale.

Choice D rationale:

Surveying the adolescents' families to determine how many family members smoke is not directly related to the comparison of the two smoking cessation programs (Program A and Program B). While family influences can be important in smoking cessation, this action does not address the immediate need to determine the most effective program among the two options being compared.