Document Type : Review Article

Authors

1 Assistant Professor in Nursing, Nursing and Midwifery Care Research Center, Department of Community Health Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

2 Assistant Professor and Director of Nursing, Department of Medical-Surgical Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

3 Instructor, Department of Medical-Surgical Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract

Research is a way of developing a body of knowledge and movement toward an influential profession. A case study has been commonly used in humanistic and medical sciences, even though generally was considered an underutilized strategy in community-based nursing especially in Iran; so we decided to introduce nurse researchers with detailed issues of this research strategy in this article. Some researches reiterated case studies' appropriateness in theory generation when dealing with new phenomena, events, techniques, processes, or a complex real-life activity in a great-depth and holistic view.  Some authors criticized this research strategy as lacking scientific rigor and not addressing generalization. Therefore, it is underutilized in nursing. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the appropriateness of the case study as a nursing research strategy and discussing methodological considerations about it.To this end, we reviewed recent literature consisting 46 references (11 textbooks of nursing research) and other articles and books on case study methodology from medical and nursing databases. The result was the extraction of the main concepts such as different case studies' applications, methods, and designs to planning, conducting and reporting a case study research as well as other issues such as sampling, data gathering, analysis, and reporting of derived results with several examples in each section and discussing considerations about this strategy. To conclude, there are possibilities in nursing clinical, administrational, and educational issues as well as preventive health care for doing case studies in nursing. Thus nurses should know case-studies' methodology and practice to be able to conduct it appropriately when necessary. 

Keywords

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