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NURS 1075: Primary Midwifery Practice, Assignment 1

Assessment 1: Essay - First Antenatal Appointment

For this assessment,  you will produce an essay in which you respond to the following scenario:

You are facilitating a first antenatal (booking in) appointment. Consider the care that should be provided to the woman at this first appointment that will establish a basis and understanding from which future care will be provided.

​In your essay, you will explain the importance of the first antenatal appointment with particular attention to:

1.       Gathering a health history (acknowledging the need to work in partnership
          with the woman and consider her social and cultural needs);

2.       Providing education surrounding the ‘routine antenatal blood tests’
          (first trimester only);

3.       Providing education surrounding the screening tests for chromosomal
          abnormalities (first trimester only).

You must support your discussion/point of view with appropriate evidence-based practice literature, using the UniSA Harvard referencing system. Your references must include your textbook, and a minimum of four (4) peer reviewed journal articles published since 2015.

This page will help you find information resources to support your argument. Please refer the Learnonline course site for full assessment instructions and marking rubric.

Understand your task

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

  • Assignments at uni help you show your understanding of different ideas and perspectives.
  • The main purpose of an essay is to convince the reader of your position on an issue.
  • You should use academic sources to support your argument.
  • Look at your assignment task for:
    • content words: these tell you what to write.
    • instruction words: these tell you how to do the task.
    • focus words: these help you identify the limits of the task.
  • Do some background reading to familiarise yourself with the topic.
  • Find academic sources from the Library Catalogue or databases to find more information.
  • Remember to record the referencing details for any good resources you find.
  • Essays have a general structure including:
    • an introduction
      This contains background information, your position, and an overview of the organisation of the essay.
    • body paragraphs
      These focus on one main idea per paragraph and contain a topic sentence, supporting sentences with evidence and examples, and a concluding sentence.
    • a conclusion
      This should summarise the main points of your essay and restate your position.
    • a reference list
      This is where you include the citations for all the references you used in your essay.
  • Writing is never a linear process. You will need to write drafts, do extra readings, and edit your essay.


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

Plan your search

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

As this assignment asks multiple questions, you should perform a search for each sub question. Use the common concepts plus one or more question-specific concept. 

For example, for the common concept:

First, identify the concept common to each question in the assignment

Concepts Alternative Keywords
antenatal appointment prenatal appointment

communication

education, discussion, inform, interact

Now do the same for the concepts unique to the sub-questions.

Concepts Alternative Keywords
health history medical history
culture ethnicity, religion
routine testing non-invasive prenatal testing, NIPT
chromosomal testing

 chromosomal abnormality screening, Chorionic villus sampling, CVS, amniocentesis, routine screening, first trimester combined screening, FTCS

Combine Concepts

Now use AND and OR to combine the keywords in your common concepts; plus one or more sub-question concepts:

antenatal OR ante-natal OR prenatal OR pre-natal

AND
discuss OR communicate OR communication ORinform OR information OR educate OR education OR interact OR interaction
AND

chromosome test OR chromosomal abnormality screening OR Chorionic villus sampling OR CVS OR amniocentesis OR routine screening OR first trimester combined screening OR FTCS

Simplify

You can also add truncation and phrase symbols

This will help you save time and get relevant results.

* finds any number of letters at the end of a word. E.g. pregnan* finds pregnant, pregnancy, pregnancies etc

Use these symbols to simplify your search string, then you are ready to begin searching:

ante-natal OR or antenatal OR prenatal OR pre-natal

AND
discuss* OR communicat* OR inform* OR educat* OR interact*
AND

"chromosom* test*" OR  "chromosom* abnormality screen*" OR "chorionic villus sampling" OR CVS OR amniocentesis OR "routine screen*" OR "first trimester combined screen*" OR FTCS

Find Journal Articles

Journals are the primary medium for scholarly communication and account for a large percentage of university research output.

If searching a database on Ovid (Medline, Embase, Emcare etc) use the advanced search, and enter each line one at a time. You can then use the search history to combine your searches:

Search the Catalogue

In the Library Catalogue:

  1. Do a search using the keywords you have identified
  2. Look at the left menu called 'Tweak my results'
  3. Tick the box to show only Peer reviewed articles
  4. In the date field, select the years you want to look at
  5. When you're done, click the 'Apply Filters' button

 

Use your textbook

    For this assignment, you will need to refer to your textbook.

  

Peer-reviewed journals

Articles from peer-reviewed journals are of high quality and can be used to support the argument 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. 

Watch the following video to learn more about scholarly sources.

  • Often you will be asked to use scholarly, academic, or peer-reviewed sources in your assignment.
  • Scholarly sources (also called academic sources) can include journal articles, books, conference papers, and theses.
  • Sources such as Wikipedia, newspapers, magazines, trade journals, newsletters, blogs, social media and personal websites are called popular sources.
  • A scholarly source:
    • is written by researchers within a subject area,
    • reports on research findings,
    • contains comprehensive in-text citations and a reference list or bibliography,
    • uses specialised terminology and a formal writing style, and
    • is often peer-reviewed or refereed.
  • A peer-reviewed or refereed journal article is assessed by experts within the field before it is published.
  • Peer-reviewed journal articles should include:
    • author details including affiliations with organisations,
    • an abstract which summarises the article,
    • evidence of research findings, and
    • in-text citations and a reference list.
  • When searching in the Library Catalogue or databases, you can filter for scholarly, academic, or peer-reviewed resources.
  • Books can also be scholarly. A scholarly book:
    • is written by an expert,
    • is published by a reputable publisher,
    • has a table of contents,
    • provides in depth subject information,
    • includes an index of terms, and
    • has in-text citations and a reference list.

Select appropriate references

You should critically evaluate all resources found to determine their appropriateness for your assignment. The video below explains more.

  • Having access to a lot of information can be overwhelming.
  • Evaluating information helps you decide what resources you should use.
  • One technique you can use is the CRAAP test.
  • Currency: How recent is the information? Does it suit your needs?
  • Relevance: Is the information relevant to your assignment?
  • Authority: Who wrote the information? Are they an expert?
  • Accuracy: Is the information accurate? Is it supported by evidence?
  • Purpose: Why was the resource created? Is there any bias?
  • You can use the CRAAP tool to think about these issues when evaluating your resources.

Write your assignment

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

Correctly reference your sources

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

If you need help, just ask!

Navigate to the Ask the Library webpage. Navigate to the UniSA study help pals webpage. Navigate to the Studiosity webpage. Navigate to the Learning Advisors' webpage.
Contact: Ask the Library Ask: the Study Help PALs Use: Studiosity Talk to: a Learning Adviser