How to Write Your Nursing Dissertation

Alan Glasper, Diane Carpenter, Alan Glasper, Diane Carpenter

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781119757733
• eBook ISBN: 9781119757757
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nursing

how to write your nursing dissertation

How to Write Your Nursing Dissertation provides nursing and healthcare students with authoritative information on developing, writing, and presenting an evidence-based practice healthcare dissertation, project or evidence-informed decision-making assignment. Written by experienced healthcare professionals, this comprehensive textbook offers clear and straightforward guidance on sourcing, accessing, and critically appraising evidence, helping students develop their clinical research and writing skills. The authors address the common difficulties encountered throughout the process of writing a dissertation, project or evidence-informed decision-making assignment, and offer expert tips and practical advice for managing time, developing study skills, interpreting statistics, publishing aspects of the work in a journal or at a conference, and more.

Now in its second edition, this bestselling guide presents relatable and engaging scenarios to illustrate the setting of standards, explore legal and ethical frameworks, examine auditing and benchmarking, and demonstrate how evidence is applied to real-world problems. Covering the entire dissertation, project or evidence-informed decision-making assignment process from a nursing and healthcare perspective, this innovative textbook:

Helps students develop and appropriately answer a clear dissertation, project or evidence-informed decision-making assignment

Addresses the fundamental aspects of evidence-based practice in an accessible and readable style

Features new and updated content on mini dissertations, final assessments, and evidence-informed decision-making projects that many healthcare institutions now require

Presents up-to-date information that meets the needs of new healthcare roles, such as the Nursing Associate and Healthcare Assistant

Includes access to a companion website containing downloadable information, an unabridged dissertation sample, and links to additional resources

How to Write Your Nursing Dissertation is a must-have guide for nursing and healthcare students, trainees, other healthcare students required to complete an evidence-based practice project, and anyone looking to strengthen their critical appraisal and assignment writing skills.

Section 1
Starting your dissertation journey

Sue is a senior staff nurse who works in an elderly care unit of a large tertiary teaching hospital. She entered nursing late after having a family and completed her enhanced diploma in adult nursing four years earlier. Her ward manager has sponsored her to undertake a ‘top‐up degree’ programme at her local university. The programme she has enrolled on is specially designed to allow enhanced/advanced diplomate holders to progress towards gaining an honours degree classification to bring their academic qualifications up to the standard of initial nurse training today. In essence, the course entails attending a number of taught study days, where she will learn about the nuts and bolts of understanding evidence‐based practice. The assessment, if successfully completed, will confer upon her a degree classification that is based on the submission of a 10 000‐word dissertation. Sue has not opened a textbook for nearly five years and although she tries to keep up to date by reading a nursing journal which her ward subscribes to, she is full of trepidation about the course she has enrolled on.

Her good friend and neighbour, Sam, aged 31, works in the local children’s hospital as a ward manager. He is already a graduate, having completed a degree in children’s nursing some 10 years ago. Sam, likewise, has been out of the studying habit for many years. He is now seeking to become a clinical nurse specialist and has been fortunate to receive funding from his hospital to undertake an MSc in Nursing at the same university as Sue. Sam has a ‘learning difference’ and is dyslexic. The dissertation element of the MSc programme is similar to an undergraduate dissertation; it is in the form of a critical review of the evidence base for practice but this time is 20 000 words in length. Sam is equally worried about completing the dissertation element of the course.

Alisha left school without taking A‐levels; she sought employment as a healthcare assistant at her local NHS Trust. Her ward managers recognised that Alisha had potential and when the new Nursing Associate Foundation Degree by the local university was launched in 2018 they sponsored her to undertake this new course. Alisha is now in her second and final year and is looking forward to registering with the Nursing and Midwifery Council as a qualified Nursing Associate. She must successfully complete an evidence‐based practice project of 4000 words before completing the course. She and her friend Charlotte, who is a third‐year student nurse, often meet in the library.

Charlotte is a third‐year undergraduate student nurse and has been recently assessed as having a learning difference. She has been having regular support meetings with the faculty learning support manager. She has to write a 7000‐word evidence‐based practice assignment based on a topic of interest arising from her clinical placement experience.

Sue and Sam are facing the next challenge in their academic journey – the writing and completion of a dissertation. There is something about the dissertation that unsettles the two friends, which might be related to the size of the assignment or the freedom in choosing a project title. In reality, the dissertation gives them great freedom to choose what excites them as professionals working in clinical domains, but there are some principles that each will have to follow in developing their ideas. Charlotte and Alisha have been advised to reflect on their clinical experience to date to help them identify either gaps in their knowledge or occasions when they have become aware of different approaches to care for patients with similar conditions. They are reminded that the purpose of evidence‐based practice is to ensure that clinical decisions are based on the best, most reliable evidence.

Chapter 1
Starting the journey of your final‐year project

Megan Bonner‐Janes

University of Southampton, UK

What is a final‐year project?

The landscape of nurse training is evolving to become more flexible and accessible. Whether you have embarked on an apprenticeship leading to a degree in nursing or a foundation degree nursing associate qualification, are attending a higher education institution and undertaking a full‐time direct entry degree in nursing, or perhaps you were awarded your nursing registration before the profession became all‐graduate in 2013 and have now chosen to ‘top‐up’ to a BSc or BN, you will be required to complete a final year project.

There are variations in the names awarded to these projects between education providers; dissertation, research project, evidenced‐based practice project or portfolio for example. The form, structure and expected content of this project will also vary between institutions, with some requiring a ‘traditional’ 10 000‐word evidence‐based practice enquiry, while others may request a significantly shorter literature review, aimed at writing for a specific relevant journal with a view to publication. This might sound unfairly disparate, but often it is easier to work with a larger word count than it is a restricted one. Perhaps you will be required to critique the literature underpinning a specific piece of healthcare guidance, and then design an audit to test whether the recommendations are happening in practice.

Although there are many potential methodologies (research word for recipe) that you could be asked to follow, there are nevertheless commonalities between them all which remain constant, and so for the purposes of this book, we will refer to this polynymous piece of work as a ‘final year project’ or ‘dissertation’.

It is unlikely at undergraduate level that you would be asked to generate any new empirical evidence, meaning you wil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• About the companion website
• The Scenarios
• Section 1: Starting your dissertation journey
• Section 2: Sourcing and accessing evidence for your dissertation
• Section 3: Developing your healthcare/ evidence‐based practice dissertation
• Section 4: Preparing to use research evidence in your dissertation
• Section 5: Critically appraising evidence
• Section 6: Taking your dissertation further: disseminating evidence, knowledge transfer; writing as a professional skill
• Index
• End User License Agreement