Designing intervention protocols for nursing clinical trials

Abstract

Intervention design is a key link in an experimental research and may directly affect the quality and outcomes of care and research. Effective nursing interventions are developed through a systematic and rigorous process. With authors own experience in designing nursing interventions, this article recommends three main steps for developing intervention protocols in nursing clinical trials. They are: 1 to establish a conceptual framework for interventions with the regard to the indentified research problem; 2 to develop evidence-based intervention protocols along with careful consideration of the intervention target, delivery methods, intervention property, intervention dose(including components, amount, frequency and duration of nursing care), interventionists and intervention management; 3 to validate and take pilot test of the protocols before their actual usage in the main study.