Develop a clear and specific clinical question using a PICO format which addresses a national health priority area

NUR2300 Assignment 1 – part B (25%) guide

This assignment is about your ability to: 

1. Develop a clear and specific clinical question using a PICO format which addresses a national health priority area

2. Locate and retrieve high quality evidence in relation to a national health priority area that has a nursing focus.
3. Summarise the evidence that you have found
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the literature
5. Demonstrate your ability to synthesise and critically appraise the evidence

Assignment Expectations:

• That you locate, retrieve and analyse quality evidence-based information using well defined search terms and using online databases to locate peer reviewed journals
• Your evidence is recent (for example ideally current within the last 5-10 years, unless seminal)
• You use USQ online databases as a method of retrieving information
• You attempt to locate and retrieve information that is relevant within an Australian context
• The evidence is relevant to nursing practice
• Your full reference list at the end of your assignment includes all 10 published studies
• Address the elements in the assignment tasks
• You discuss the literature you have found in relation to helping to answer your PICO question
• You collect primary research articles
• That you adhere to a good standard of grammar, spelling and referencing.
• Submission is before the due date – unless otherwise negotiated with the course examiner

Assignment Instructions

Please follow these instructions for your assignment:

FORMATTING:

• Use the assignment layout template provided as a guide
• You can use headings – see template
• Typed responses
• Times New Roman, Size 12 Font
• Double line spacing (except in the reference list- single line spacing)
• No cover sheet required
• No title page required
• 2,250 words (10% over or under acceptable)
• Header including your name and student number on each page of the assignment
• In-text referencing are not included in the word count, nor headings (standard template)

REFERENCING:

• APA (6th Edition) – click here for more information 
• Use of in-text referencing throughout your assignment
• Full list of references provided on the final page at the end of your assignment

SUBMISSION:

• Electronic Submission via study desk – see link for Assignment 1 Submission
• Only 1 file to be submitted. This should include your assignment and your marking criteria
• Assignment needs to be submitted prior to or on the due date
• Assignments may be submitted up to 1 week prior to the due date
• If you have extenuating circumstances and may have problems submitting, please refer to extension requirements.

(Read this before you begin)

This assignment is based upon the article Davis, Drey, & Gould (2009). You will find the reading in Course Readings – DiReCt under the Assignment 1 heading.

Assignment 1   What are scoping studies? A review of the nursing literature (Journal)

Davis, K., Drey, N., & Gould, D. (2009). What are scoping studies? A review of the nursing literature, International Journal of Nursing Studies, 46, 1386-1400. Retrieved from ScienceDirect database.

The article by Davis et al. (2009) provides an overall approach to scoping a potential study based initially from a research question. From there the article outlines approaches to scoping out a study which involves considering appropriate evidence based literature and then a way of synthesising what evidence already exists to help answer a question.

This assignment is based upon the framework presented in Figure 2 of the article by Davis, Drey & Gould (2009). You are asked to address each of the stages in relation to your national health priority area.

Stage 1: Identify the initial research question

Stage 2: Identify the relevant studies

Stage 3: Study selection

Stage 4: Charting

Stage 5: Collate, summarise and report

Assignment Tasks

Introduction: (approx. 100 words)

Provide a brief introduction to the assignment – for example:

• A brief indication of the national health priority area and links with nursing
• The key areas that your assignment will focus on e.g. scoping the current literature in relation to a national health priority and relationship and importance with nursing

1. Asking a Clinical Question using a PICO framework (approx. 50)

Based on your chosen national health priority area, develop a PICO question that relates also to nursing.  The PICO question should consider the following aspects:      I would like dementia please

• It should be phrased as a question (and end with a question mark)
• It must be related to your chosen national health priority area and have a clear link with nursing
• It must clearly identify aspects of the PICO framework within the body of the question, for example (P), (I), (C), and (O). This means within your question, actually place the PICO in brackets where appropriate within the body of the question.

2. Method and rationale for locating and retrieving evidence-based nursing literature (approx. 500 words)

Refer to 2.3 (method) and 2.4 (data selection) on page 1388 of the article by Davis, Drey & Gould (2009). In a similar format, describe the methods and processes you used to select data which was relevant to your PICO question.  For this task, use third person to describe the method – see how the paragraph is written in the article. For example, you can state… The method used to identify the evidence-based literature was threefold; 1)……..2) and 3)…….. . It is highly recommended that you support your literature searching processes with other literature e.g. from your text or course content, or additional research textbooks.

Your description can include:

• USQ online databases that you used and why
• Peer-reviewed journals (how and why you used them)
• Recency of information (e.g. you decided to narrow your search to certain years)
• Certain peer reviewed journals
• How you narrowed your search to find relevant information
• Hierarchy of evidence that you focused on (be specific about what you based this on e.g. Joanna Briggs Hierarchy of Evidence)
• Types of studies that you considered appropriate to include e.g. qualitative or quantitative or types of study methods used.
• Key search terms relevant to the PICO question – identify alternative search terms that were also used to help broaden search strategy if required
• Key search strategies – e.g. Boolean operators
• Inclusion or exclusion criteria that you applied and why
• Publication types e.g. primary research articles, clinical guidelines

3. Study Selection (approx. 500 words)
4. a) Using Figure 3 (pg. 1389) of the article as a basis, represent your search in a diagram.
5. b) See Table 1 (pg. 1390). As a framework, summarise the evidence that you have collected. For this step, you are only asked to summarise 10 articles. Create a table using the same headings as Table 1, add your studies details and then copy and paste into your assignment.
6. Collate, summarise and report (approx. 1000 words)
7. a) This task requires you to synthesise the evidence.  This is a deeper more critical approach to summarising the evidence. This means that you are asked to consider the evidence from across all of the 10 articles which you have collected in your literature search.  Your synthesis of the evidence should include a summary of the followingand must include in text referencing – you need to reference your articles plus any other relevant literature:

• Key findings and conclusions from the across evidence
• Any recommendations for nursing practice based on the articles
• Any gaps found in the literature
• An analysis of the overall strength of the findings and research
• How well the literature answers or doesn’t answer the PICO question

Conclusion: (approx. 100 words)

Overall Steps in this Assignment

Suggested Layout for Assignment 1

Title

Introduction

Question using a PICO format

Rationale for the PICO question

Method of identifying data sources

Study selection diagram

Summary of evidence table

Rationale for selection of studies

Synthesis of the evidence-based literature

Conclusion: