Midwifery: NURS 1062: Contemporary Midwifery Practice

This page will get you started finding resources and writing Assignment 2.   You should use a range of quality sources to support the argument that you are presenting in your essay. 

This assignment is an essay and you can choose from three choices of topic.  You only need to answer one of the questions using current literature and your textbook. You are required to reference your program textbook(s) and a minimum of four (4) peer reviewed journal articles published from 2010. You may include articles before this date if they are significant and relevant to your discussion but you must have a minimum of 5 references (including text) dated after 2010.

Read all information related to your assessment to understand what your lecturers and tutors are looking for when they are marking your assessments.

• LearnOnline site
• Course outline
• Academic writing requirements
• Assessment Rubric

View the Student Engagement Unit's Academic Skills website for help planning your assignment and making sense of the assignment and instruction words.

You may find it useful to make a mind map to organise your thoughts about the topic:

Start by identifying the concepts (main ideas) from your assignment topic prior to searching. Then consider alternative words for each.

Break down the question

Example Question:

• What factors in the obstetric ultrasound contribute to the expectant mother’s satisfaction?

Firstly, it is important to define any terms that you are not familiar with.

Next identify what the main concepts are and then think of synonyms or alternative terms for these concept words

Now use AND and OR to combine your keywords

Finally, add truncation, wildcards and phrase symbols This will help you save time and get relevant results.

For example

• truncation can help find plural word forms, pregan* will find pregnant and pregnancy and pregnancies 
• use quotation marks to keep phrases together, for example "patient satisfaction" OR "consumer satisfaction"

With truncation/phrases 

The Library Catalogue can be a useful starting point in locating quality information.

Use the Library Catalogue to find:

• books or ebooks
• journals or journal articles
• conference papers and newspaper articles​

Learn to use the Library catalogue by working through the interactive tutorial below.

Journal articles are often found in databases.

Useful databases to search:

Search Emcare Tutorial 

Database limits and filters

Database limits and filters may be applied to reduce your search results if you have too many.  Some useful limits include 'English Language' or date. Note the following about using limits:

• Using a limit only applies to the database you are currently searching. If you have selected more than one, only the results from the filtered database will display.

• If the database is bibliographic (abstract) only – it won’t find any full-text. Using a full text limiter will therefore yield 0 results.

If you limit your results, there is always the potential that you could miss some important/useful research. 

You need to use credible references for this Assessment.

Credible references are articles from peer reviewed journals that are of high quality and can be used to support arguments that you are presenting. Articles in peer reviewed journals must go through an evaluation process with experts in the field before being published. The term refereed is also used.

The terms scholarly and academic are also sometimes used to indicate quality journals.

Remember the assignment instructions:

• Peer Reviewed Journals
• Minimum of 5 published from 2010 onwards
• Review the assignment rubic to see what is required.

View the Student Engagement Unit's Study Help website for help writing your assignment, or to make an appointment with SEU staff.

You must appropriately cite (‘acknowledge’) all references used in your assignment to avoid plagiarism.