Nursing Assignment Tips

Hi All,

At Librarians' Meeting yesterday, Cathy indicated that Nursing students are starting to contact her about their assignments. Since Reference students do not have access to the Wiki, I'm posting Nursing assignment information here as well. 

Students, if you find that you are experiencing difficulty with these assignments after-hours (8pm-2am), please direct the Nursing students to contact a librarian for assistance. If it's during the normal work hours of 8am-5pm, please try to contact a librarian to come assist them. 

Let me know if you have any questions! Cathy has worked with Nursing students for several years so she is an excellent resource if you're having trouble or have any questions as well. 

Thanks!

Christy 

Here's some guidelines for the assignments: 

Levels of Evidence:

• Determining Levels of Evidence

• To figure out which level a specific article is, read the abstract and the methods section.
• The strategies the writers used to gather their data/information will determine which level you’d assign to a study.

• Levels of Evidence Chart 1

• The image below offers some explanations and a chart to help students figure out what level of evidence their research articles demonstrate.
• Information was gathered from pages 9-12 in Melnyk, B. M. & Fineout-Overholt, E. (Eds.). (2005). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practices. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
  

• Levels of Evidence Chart 2

• This image offers a bit more description regarding whether research is primary or secondary.
• Information is from page 10 in Melnyk, B. M. & Fineout-Overholt, E. (Eds.). (2005). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practices. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Nursing Leadership/Management

First: Talk with student about the topic (which focus? which aspect? definitions of terms?)
Second: Review assignment. 
Task = Evidence-based research regarding a particular management opportunity observed in a clinical setting.  They will need to present a synopsis of the setting, problem, personnel involved, etc. 

How their project takes shape will depend, in large part, on if their topic is a solution or a problem.  They will need to identify/discuss their topic (solution/problem) using published research, evaluate their proposed management tactic using decision-making tools/strategies (using info from their textbook), pick their preferred solution & discuss change strategies required to implement their solution (using info from their textbook).

• Some example topics: 

• Topics = Decrease Code Blue Occurrences in Med/Surg

• Code Blue = cardiac/respiratory (complications, emergency, critical incident, etc.)
• Med/Surg = medical surgical (after surgery, step-down unit, perioperative, ambulatory surgery, etc.)
• Possible first round of searches.  The following is based on the student's preferences.  Each student will be different.
             surgery                  (maybe choose title field later)
  AND   cardiac arrest         (used to narrow the search)
  NOT   "cardiac surgery"   (added 'cause didn't want to look at this set of patients)
• Possible second round of searches.  Based on what student saw the first go-round.
                   perioperative
       AND    cardiac arrest
       AND    prevent* OR predict*
       NOT    "cardiac surgery" 

• Healthcare Quality's Impact on Costs

• Determine with student which costs are being examined: patients? insurance providers? medical provider?  It's probably the last one, but could go to any group.  Depends on what the student wants to do.
• Be sure the student understands to go to reputable sources & to the original sources like Medicare, Census, etc. & help student locate research articles.
• Ask student which aspect of health costs he/she plans to use as focus.
• Possible search terms when looking for possible management solutions related to decreasing costs associated with readmissions.  Each student will be different.
                   readmission* OR readmit* OR rehospital*
       AND    management
       AND    hospital* OR medical OR nurs*

• Closed Staffing in Medical Surgical Units (benefits/effects)

• Possible search terms
            nursing
  AND  closed staffing OR closed-unit OR "closed unit"
• student will need to define the PICO based on teacher's guidance

• Decrease Readmissions -- cost an aspect (maybe facilities, maybe patient)

• Possible search terms to begin looking for articles
            readmission* OR readmit* OR rehospital*
  AND  management
  AND   hospital* OR medical OR nurs*

• Substance Abuse in the Workplace

• Possible search terms to begin looking for articles (CINAHL, Cochrane & Medline probably work best of this one)
            impairment AND health professional (SU term)
  OR    impairment AND nurs* AND __________ (insert drug type or name.  For example, alcohol)
• Looking for substance abuse AND nursing finds too many articles focused on patients with substance issues, instead of the nurses.   

• Sending article links to faculty members:

• For some exercises, nursing students must send their instructor(s) direct links to articles, which has caused some frustration and confusion for them. The following measures seem to work well:
• Use the "Persistent link to the record" URL that shows up in CINAHL records, which will take the receiver to the item's record where the full text can be accessed. These links should now open either on or off campus.  If they will not open off-campus, ask the Systems Librarian to check if EBSCO has "lost" the IP address, so patrons can use their NTNET logins.
• Use links in Cochrane to the PDF or the search page(the link is in the address bar at the browser window's top). Both links seem to work & will let the receiver access (or log in when off-campus) Cochrane and get to the item.
• Instructor might accept the article as an attached PDF. Tell the student to save the PDF to the desktop & then link to it in an email.
• Instructor might be willing to accept the record's accession number and then log-on to CINAHL (or another EBSCO database that has the item), and use the accession number to locate the article.