Course : HLT54115 Diploma of Nursing
Subject Code and Title : DTH107 Determine Health
Unit(s) of Competency : – HLTAAP003 Analyse and respond to client health information CHCPOL003 Research and apply evidence to practise
Title of Assessment Task : – Assessment 2: Research Project
Length – 1500 words +/- 10%
Introduction
Within your scope of practice as an Enrolled Nurse, you are required to apply critical-thinking skills and nursing rationale related to each individual client’s specific nursing care requirements. As a part of this, you need to develop evidence-based practice skills, which involve establishing an information need, gathering information and critically analysing the information in relation to the individual client and your work. As an enrolled nurse, it is essential to use critical-thinking skills and nursing rationale in order to provide the best possible care to each individual client. This involves being able to assess the specific needs of each client and develop a plan of care that is tailored to those needs.
To develop evidence-based practice skills, it is necessary to establish an information need by identifying the specific questions or issues that need to be addressed in relation to a client’s care. This may involve reviewing the client’s medical history, assessing their current condition, and identifying any potential risks or concerns.
Once the information need has been established, the next step is to gather information from a range of sources, including research articles, guidelines, and clinical practice standards. It is important to gather a wide range of information in order to get a well-rounded understanding of the issue at hand.
Once the necessary information has been gathered, it is important to critically analyse the information in relation to the individual client and the specific context of the nursing care being provided. This involves evaluating the quality of the evidence, considering the relevance of the information to the client’s situation, and determining the best course of action based on the available evidence.
By developing evidence-based practice skills, enrolled nurses can ensure that they are providing the most appropriate and effective care to their clients, based on the best available evidence. This can help to improve patient outcomes and support the overall quality of care being provided.
Summary
You will be required to research two health-related issues in your context and develop actions based on research outcomes for management and promotion/communication of these actions. This should be submitted in the form of a research project, using the Research Report template provided in the assessment 2 area in Blackboard.
Please refer to the Task Instructions for details on how to complete this task.
Task Instructions
For this assessment, you must research two (2) issues in nursing and prepare a research project that includes actions for resolving each one. These should be issues you feel need to be addressed to improve professional practice, compliance, education, documentation, morale, or another field.
You may choose the issues you focus on or select from the list below.
•Effect of the ageing workforce on staffing levels
•Retention of adequately trained staff
•Bullying in the workplace
•Maintaining professional capabilities
•Effectively supporting non-English speaking clients
•Adhering to scope of practice expectations
•Rate of advancement in technology
Your assessment must take the form of a report with headings addressing specific criteria. A template has been created to help you do this. To complete your research project, download the ‘Research Project’ template and follow the structure outlined on that document. Then, respond to the research questions provided.
Submit this document as your research project.
You can see the questions below in the Marking Guide, along with a suggestion as to how each one should be answered.
You will be assessed according to the marking guide below, where your responses will be deemed as either satisfactory or not satisfactory. ALL your responses must be marked as satisfactory in order to pass the assessment. If your assessment is not deemed satisfactory, you will be allowed a further second attempt before being awarded a Not satisfactory mark for the assessment.
Research Tips
In addition to the instructions on the Research Project template, you might like to read the tips below. These provide some steps and suggestions on how to conduct your research, where to look for evidence and how to start preparing your response.
1.When identifying the research topic:
•Think about issues that are important to you, your field and which will potentially help improve professionalpractice approaches or client experiences.
•The research statement presents the purpose of the research in light of a clear and focused topic.
2.Find out what has been written about your topic. A good starting point is the list of references or bibliography of arecent article or book on the topic. Then use other bibliographical sources, including abstracts, electronic data basesand the Internet to search.
3.Suitable databases include: PubMed, Embase, Medline Complete, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Web of Science, EbscoHost, ProQuest Central, ProQuest Public, Natural Medicines Comprehensive, SAGE Research Methods, AltHealthWatch, Informit Health Databases, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection, MeSH, or other peer-reviewed databases/journals. Most of these can be accessed through the library website.
4.In searching and retrieving the appropriate literature, the search strategy is important. Search strategies include useof appropriate search terms and synonyms and assessing the results of this initial search. It is important to have pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. For example:
•Publication period – sources should be as current as possible so define by years. For example, from 2010 or2014 onwards, or similar. For this assignment, use the limiter setting of searching from 5 years ago to now.
•Language – sources should be in English.
•Human/non-human – you may want to decide if you only want to search for research that has been conductedon humans or you may want to include animal studies as well.
5.If you decide that a text is relevant, write down the bibliographical details in full; as the item would appear in your listof references or bibliography.
6.For each topic, focus on between 3-5 key sources to start. You may choose to include or discard these sourcesdepending on their quality, specificity and applicability to your topic.
7.Find the literature. First check whether the material is held at Laureate Library, or you might be able to use inter-library loans.
8.Read the literature. Record the author and the title and take notes. Your aim is to determine how the topic isapproached and what is said about it. As you make notes, ask yourself the following questions about each text.
•What sort of evidence is it?
•What are the aims or hypotheses?
•What is the methodology?
•Does the methodology suit the aims?
•How reliable or valid is it?
•What are the outcomes?
9.Write short summaries for each piece of information you have found – For each relevant text, try to write a short oneparagraph summary similar to an abstract.
10.Organise the summaries. Try to identify similarities and group the summaries accordingly. The headings under whichthe summaries are grouped will vary, depending on the topic and the subject.
11.When writing the research project, begin with an introduction that provides referenced definition of evidence-basedpractice and how it relates to research and continuous quality improvement. Then give a brief explanation of whyEBP is a requirement of nursing practice (i.e. refer to the NMBA standards for practicehttps://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/codes-guidelines-statements/professional-standards/enrolled-nurse-standards-for-practice.aspx )
12.Tips on conducting database searches are available at: http://library.laureate.net.au/research_skills/databases
13.Tips on literature review basics are available at: http://library.laureate.net.au/research_skills/litreview
Assessment Requirements
The assessment is to include in text citations and a reference list following APA referencing style. The APA referencing guide can be located in the Academic Writing Guide at http://library.laureate.net.au/apa. A minimum of 8 references are to be included. These can include journal articles, books, reputable websites, or videos.
