The SF-36 Quality-of-Life Instrument: Updates and Strategies for Critical Care Research

The use of standardized tools is of growing value as the healthcare research community responds to a “tsunami of enthusiasm” for evidence-based practice.¹ Evidence-based practice refers to healthcare practices based on scientific data that are reliable enough that researchers can replicate the data. Nurses, medical providers, researchers, and administrators share a desire to have patients’ care supported by persuasive evidence that the care given produces the desired therapeutic outcome.^2– 6 In the critical care setting, physicians, nurse faculty investigators, or others often ask nurses to participate in research studies. In these situations, a nurse’s role might be limited to that of data collector, using a protocol provided by someone else, or the nurse could take the lead in becoming a true partner. The purpose of this article is to familiarize critical care nurses with a tool that is increasingly used in studies of critical care patients: the SF-36...