Reference help for nursing students.

I have created a research guide for helping nursing students. The guide is unlisted so it is not accessible through the 'Research Guides' tab, or in any other public way. The link is: http://library.raritanval.edu/sp/subjects/guide.php?subject=reffornurses and I will email this out to all reference librarians as well.

I've organized the guide by semester and class along with the requirements for resources, the assignments, typical topics that students choose, and faculty who usually teach the class in case you need to get in touch with them.

Students usually struggle with APA formatting and MS Word which I offer to help with  and give them a once over on their papers closer to the due date. You do not have to do this if you don't want to.

The big assignments for fall are for Nursing of Adults II (QSEN group project paper) and Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing (research critique paper). I have sample papers for these classes which I will have at the reference desk. They are NOT to leave the ref desk under any circumstances and students may not photocopy any of the sample papers. They can write ideas down when consulting them, but that is all. The sample papers are numbered- there are 3 sample papers for Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing, and there are 5. Make sure all sample papers are back in the 'Nursing' binder.

Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions!
-Alyssa

Nursing QSEN Assignment

The nursing students are working on an assignment related to QSEN competencies and seem to have a very poor understanding of what QSEN competencies are. There are 6 competencies outlined in the article "Quality and Safety Education for Nurses," along with the "Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes" required for each competency. The competencies are:

patient-centered care
teamwork and collaboration
evidence-based practice
quality improvement
safety
informatics

My understanding of the assignment is that they are being asked to consider a situation they encounter in their clinical and then evaluate it in terms of one or more of the competencies and find related research. The first students that approached me about this said, "We want to do diabetes." You can imagine how successful that reference interaction was. If you get students at the desk asking about this assignment, I would suggest making sure they have the assignment sheet out and understand what they are being asked to do, and also that they understand what QSEN means. If they haven't gotten that far yet, they aren't ready to start on the assignment.

The article that serves as the basis for the assignment, which apparently they were not assigned to read (at least not yet) is in Science Direct . The competency charts are available at http://www.qsen.org/ksas_prelicensure.php#evidence-based_practice.

Nursing Case Studies Part 2

Thanks to Alyssa for the screenshots on how to limit searches to a case study in Proquest and Ebsco databases! Case Study can be selected under the Document Type limiters in both, as you can see towards the bottom of each image.

Nursing Case Studies Assignment

We get this question so frequently that I decided to come up with a resource I can print for the students who seem to need more clarification.  Please add any search terms you have used to identify case studies (with success, that is.)

Questions for evaluating case studies/ clinical research:

What is the purpose and/or rationale for the study?

Are the aims of the study clearly stated?
How significant is the need for research?
Does the research look at data gathered previously?

Where was the article published?

Who funded the study?
Who conducted the study?
Is credibility of the researchers established?

How was the study conducted?

Were participants in the study randomly assigned?
What were the characteristics of the people who participated in the study?
How many people were tested?
Is the study's sampling strategy appropriate to address the aims?
Was there a control group?

How long was the study?

Did the research follow a group over time?
How many completed the study?
Do the researchers consider the effects on the study of the relationship between themselves and the informants?

How was the data collected?

Are the study's data collection strategies appropriate?
Was the data gathered descriptive or quantitative?

Was the data analyzed? How?

Does the article analyze one study or multiple studies?
If the article discusses multiple studies, what types of studies were included?
Is there a rigorous process of data analysis evident?

Have the results of the study been repeated by other investigators?

Are the findings confirmable?
Are the findings analyzed based on the purpose and research question?
Are the findings of the study logically transferable to other groups of patients?

Are the findings clear and easy to understand?

Do the researchers justify the data interpretation used in the analysis?
How relevant and useful is the article to a patient/clinical problem/clinical scenario or a practitioner?
How important are the findings?
Do they directly suggest specific further research?

Appraisal questions were derived from:

KT Clearinghouse, KT. Completed Qualitative Research Worksheet for Evidence-Based Nursing. 2011. http://ktclearinghouse.ca/cebm/syllabi/nursing/samples/qualitative/worksheet (accessed September 13, 2012).

Family Caregiver Alliance . Evaluating Medical Research Findings and Clinical Trials. n.d. http://caregiver.org/caregiver/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=402 (accessed September 13, 2012).

RVCC PRINT MATERIALS:

Essentials of nursing research: methods, appraisals, and utilization
Polit, Denise F.
Philadelphia : Lippincott, c2001

RT81.5 .P63 2001

Studying a study and testing a test: how to read the medical evidence

Richard K. Riegelman.
Philadelphia, Pa. : Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000.
R118.6 .R537 2000

RVCC ELECTRONIC RESOURCES:

Design and analysis of clinical nursing research studies [electronic resource]

Colin R. Martin and David R. Thompson.
London ; New York : Routledge, 2000.
RVCC only - Read this book online

 How to read a paper [electronic resource] : the basics of evidence based medicine

Trisha Greenhalgh.
London : BMJ, 2000.
RVCC only - Read this book online

ONLINE:

University of South Australia Critical Appraisal Tools

http://www.unisa.edu.au/Research/Sansom-Institute-for-Health-Research/Research-at-the-Sansom/Research-Concentrations/Allied-Health-Evidence/Resources/CAT/

This resource provides questions based on type of studies (randomized controlled, non-randomized controlled, case studies, qualitative research, mixed method, etc.) aimed at identifying "methodological flaws" in the literature and the quality of the research evidence.  

 

TERMS TO INCLUDE IN SEARCH STATEMENTS:

Case studies

Method*
Research – Methodology
Participants
Qualitative  research

Printing PPT from Kean Blackboard

Kean students trying to print PowerPoints that they've downloaded from Blackboard are encountering problems printing the documents. We were able to get them to print by following this process:

1. Select the PPT in Blackboard.
2. In the dialog box that appears asking to Open or Save, click Save.
3. Save the document to the desktop.
4. Once it has saved, the dialog box will reappear. Click Open.
5. At the top of PowerPoint will be a yellow bar with an "Enable Editing" button. Click this button.
6. Once you've enabled editing, you should be able to go to File, Print as normal.

Scholarly articles to critique a research article

There is a nursing assignment that requires students (I think) to find scholarly articles on how to critique a research study. Here are a few that we found in Science Direct:

Marshall, Gil. (2005). Critiquing a research article. Radiography 11(1).

Conkin, D. J. (2005). Critiquing research for use in practice. Journal of Pediatric Health Care 19(3).

Beck, C.T. (2009). Critiquing qualitative research. AORN 90(4).

A search in ScienceDirect for "critique research" or something along those lines seems to bring up results. Still not sure exactly if this is what's expected of the assignment, but if you get the question....