Guides: Nursing: NURS 2023: Health of Adults

NURS 2023: Health of Adults

This assignment requires you to complete the following:

A nursing case study of 2000 words:

explaining the nursing care required
with a plan of care for adults with acute health problems
applying an inter-professional model of care inclusive of pertinent legalities
while analysing the legal and ethical considerations

This assignment help assumes you have read your course outline. For full assessment details, please refer to your course outline.

Nursing standards, safely and quality standards

The following resources may also be useful:

Nursing and Midwifery Board: Professional standards for
- codes of conduct
- standards for practice, and
- codes of ethics
Nurses care planning process
- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses

Plan your search

Key points from the video

Searching for your whole assignment is not very effective
Mapping out your search is a good place to start
Identify the key concepts in your question or topic
You don't need to search for task words
Use double quotation marks (" ") to search for two or more words together as a phrase
Think about what other words (synonyms and alternative terms) might be used to describe the key concepts
You can use acronyms, but you should search for the full terms as well
To find fewer results, add different concepts using AND (e.g. rural AND Australia)
To find more results, add synonyms or alternative terms, to your search using OR (e.g. "renewable energy" OR solar OR wind)
You can change your search as you find more information
For more information, read the How to plan your search document

How to plan your search (PDF)
A short guide on steps you need to plan your search, including how to combine your search terms using OR, AND, NOT.

Search Strategies

After watching the above video you can now start by identifying the concepts (main ideas) from your assignment topic prior to searching. Consider alternative words for these concepts which, together with the concept term, become your searchable keywords.

Question:
Prepare a best-practice care plan for adult patients with severe burns

Keywords Concepts	Synonyms and alternative concepts
burns	fire injury, heat injury, thermal burn
plan of care	care plan
best practices	bench mark, best-practices, good practices

Combined Search String with: AND/ OR/ truncation */phrase ("word + word")

Line 1	burn* OR "fire injur* " OR "heat injur* " OR "thermal burn*"
Connector	AND
Line 2	"care plan" OR "plan of care"
Connector	AND
Line 3	"best practice" OR "best-practice" OR "good-practice*" OR "bench mark"

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

Search the Library Catalogue

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.

Search in databases

Journal articles are often found in databases.

Useful databases to search:

Emcare (via Ovid)
Key database for nursing and allied health, covering thousands of scholarly and peer reviewed journals from 1995 to present. Publications are primarily European and North American. Records are indexed with Emtree thesaurus terms (same as Embase). Example subject coverage: nursing, critical and intensive care, nutrition, physiotherapy, public and occupational health, geriatrics and palliative care.

Search Emcare Tutorial

MEDLINE (via Ovid)
The US National Library of Medicine database. Covers medicine, nursing, bio-medicine, pharmacy and allied health. Can filter by publication type.
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
Health Collection
The Health Collection includes research articles, reports and case studies of practical support to anyone studying or working in therapeutic, diagnostic and preventative health roles
ScienceDirect
For peer reviewed articles on a large range of subjects including health

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.

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.

Key points from the video

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.

Key points from the video

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 evaluate your resources.

Write your assignment

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

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

Assessment rubric

Please refer to the assessment rubric to ensure that your assignment content covers all of the assessment criteria.