However, a weakness of the sample was that several of the participants, once chosen dropped out from dying, failing to reach them for follow up appointments, or other complications making the sample drop down to 151 (Coultas et al, 2005). Also, only limiting the population to the 17 care clinics within a part of Florida does not give a well enough demographic of the COPD population. Having the sample expand to both hospitals and other states would give a better demographic of how the managements work. Having the nurses randomly assigned to each intervention was beneficial when dealing with bias within the study. However, the nurses only had to have initial contact with the patient for the first encounter, yet after, it was only by phone calls every month, questionnaires, and scales (Coultas et al, 2005). This is a huge limitation to the study because the patient should be assessed in person. Seeing a patient gives the nurse reassurance that the patient is following the management that was assigned to them. Also, assessing the patient’s symptoms is a way to evaluate if the management is effective. By having the sample be diverse between races, provides an adequate demographic …show more content…
Nonetheless, the majority was white, 86.1, black were 13.3, and other races were 0.7, which is not adequate since some of the interventions did not have other race participants in their group (Coultas et al, 2005). For instance, the UC and CM groups only had white and black participants, where as the MM group had all three races. In order to get a better understanding of the effectiveness of the management a widened demographic should have been done. Also, having the sample be mostly women around 80% makes people reading the study wonder how much does the effectiveness affect men (Coultas et al, 2005)? When evaluating the interventions, the two groups UC and MM containing the GOLD guidelines were not statically significant in making an impact on the effectiveness of the management, which means these two specific tests cannot be evaluated towards the population. However, the CM group was statistically significant regarding a portion of the management guidelines being illness intrusiveness, which can be seen within the population. Conversely, a weakness of the study which was stated within the article, was between the two interventions, the GOLD guidelines and collaborative care management, not stressing the effect of “exercise, comorbidities, and social support” within helping the management of