Guides: Midwifery: NURS 1074: Evidence Based Midwifery

Evidence Based Midwifery Essay

This page will get you started finding resources and writing your Essay.

Please refer to your Course outline in the LearnOnline site for assessment instructions.

1. Understand the Task

Please view each tab for the Essay topics. Remember you only need to answer one of the two topics.

You are required to reference your program textbook(s) and a minimum of four (4) additional peer reviewed journal articles published from 2015. 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 2015.

Your paper must include:

1. An introduction demonstrating your understanding of the topic and your plan
for the essay.

2. A clear response to the essay question with reference to up-to-date and
relevant research as well as professional codes and guidelines.

3. A concise conclusion that summarises the main points of your essay and returns
the reader to the view, or position you have taken.

4. Please provide a reference list presented in UniSA Harvard Referencing System
format.

5. Instructions on how to attach a feedback form are found via the Assessment
link on the course homepage.

Refer to the Course Outline for comprehensive information.

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

Understanding assignments and instruction words
The next step is to try and focus your question as much as possible. This makes it easier to identify what to search for later, to actually do the search, and to determine whether the resources found are relevant.
Using mindmaps to plan assignments

Topic 1:

The concept of woman centred care is central to midwifery practice. Discuss the bioethical principles of autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence and how these principles underpin the midwifery philosophy and woman centred care.

This essay requires you to provide evidence of a clear understanding of the four ethical principles, midwifery philosophy and woman centred care.

What is the task word (or words)?

DISCUSS

What are the content words? (You can find these by taking the task word & adding the question “What?”)

DISCUSS WHAT? - bioethical principles

What are the limits you need to remember?

Focus on the principles of autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence
how these principles correspond to aim of providing woman-centred care (how do they relate to providing woman-centred care - make sure you make this connection)

Topic 2:

Strategic Directions for Australian Maternity Services (COAG 2019) identified four values which underpin twelve principles for woman centred maternity care in Australia.

Principle 1.1 states "women receive individualised information and appropriate care during the perinatal period that is based on current, high quality evidence."

Provide an overview of evidence based practice (EBP) in maternity care and discuss at least three challenges and three benefits of EBP in the context of the philosophy of woman centred care.

This essay requires you to provide evidence of a sound understanding of evidence based practice and woman centred care, and your ability to discern how evidence based practice may interact with providing woman centred care.

What is Evidence Based Practice (EBP) in maternity care

Provide an overview

What are the content words? (You can find these by taking the task word & adding the question “What?”)

DISCUSS WHAT?
- Three challenges
- Three benefits

What is the context you need to remember?

Focus on women centred care

2. Plan your search

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

Break down the question

As your topic might have multiple questions, you should perform a search for each sub-question. Use the common concepts plus one or more question-specific concepts.

For the example of 'What are the Prenatal care models for women who live in a rural area?' identify the concepts common to the main question.

Key concepts	Alternative concepts
prenatal care	antenatal care, midwifery care
care models	models of care
rural area	remote, outer regional

Now use AND and OR to combine your keywords

Line 1	prenatal care OR antenatal care OR midwifery care
Connector	AND
Line 2	care models OR models of care
Connector	AND
Line 3	rural area OR remote OR outer regional

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

For example

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

With truncation/phrases

Line 1	"prenatal care" OR "antenatal care" OR "midwi* care"
Connector	AND
Line 2	"care model" OR "model of care"
Connector	AND
Line 3	"rural area" OR remote OR "outer regional*"

Plan your search (Midwifery)
Learn more about how to plan your search for your assignment in this Library guide.

3. Find information

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

Use the Library Collection to find:

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

3b. Databases

Emcare
Searching in Emcare is different to searching in the Library Catalogue.

1. Type your first concept and alternative words into the search box.
2. Untick the box labeled Map to Subject Heading.

3. Select Search.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 for your next concepts.
5. Tick the boxes next to each of your concept lines.
6. Select Combine with AND.

7. Scroll down to see your results.

More useful databases:

MEDLINE (via Ovid)
A large biomedical database produced by the US National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE is key for health-related topics. Indexed with the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and with records from 1946 to current, primarily for scholarly journal articles. MEDLINE via Ovid is recommended for systematic searches rather than via the free PubMed.
Health Collection (via Informit)
Covers health-related material from and about Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and South East Asia. Focuses on nursing and allied health, with key subjects including public health, patient care, aged care, Aboriginal Australians, child welfare and family violence.
Scopus
One of the largest multidisciplinary bibliographic databases, Scopus covers peer reviewed journals, trade journals, books and book chapters, conference papers and patents. Material chosen for inclusion meets strict selection criteria such as type of peer review and significance to the field. Also provides backward and forward citation searching, publication metrics and analytical features
ScienceDirect
For peer reviewed articles on a large range of subjects including health

4. Evaluate your References

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:

Reference your program textbook(s)
Minimum of 4 additional peer reviewed journal articles published from 2015 onwards

Evaluate (Midwifery)
Learn more about evaluating information for your assignment in this Library guide.

5. Synthesize ideas

Review the above video Essays - Synthesizing ideas by EMTeaching Videos (CC - BY 4.0 licence). This video will give you some ideas on how to synthesize ideas in your essay.

6. Write your Assignment

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

Study help: Writing and academic language
Printable resources and videos to help you structure, format and write your assignment using appropriate language.