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:

Plan your search

  • 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

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:
"What are best practices for the plan of care 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"

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): includes nearly 5 million records of the scholarly and peer-reviewed literature in nursing and allied health dating back to 1995. Subject coverage are Clinical Medicine, Health Professions, Nursing, Pharmacology and Public Health

Search Emcare Tutorial 

  • Medline:  The US National Library of Medicine database. Covers medicine, nursing, bio-medicine, pharmacy and allied Health. 

  • Scopus: One of the largest bibliographic, multidisciplinary databases. Covers chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, life sciences, health sciences, social sciences, psychology adn economics, as well as biological, agricultural, environmental and general sciences. 

  • Informit Health Collection for Australian information

  • ScienceDirect for peer reviewed articles on a huge 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.

  • 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 evaluate your resources.

Write your assignment

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

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

Correctly reference your sources

Referencing roadmap banner. Navigate to the referencing roadmap resource.

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