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NURS-460 Senior Immersion: Types of Resources

A library guide for NURS-460 Senior Immersion, specifically on the capstone project.

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In addition to your clinicals, this class, other courses, studying, eating, sleeping and well, life... you do not have time to conduct original research. For this capstone, you will be relying on others' research to support your PICO(T) and intervention. Basically, you are writing a literature review research paper.  

You will see in your capstone requirements that you need five (5) articles. This is specifically for the literature review section of your capstone. These articles must be original research on the use/ efficacy of your intervention or support the need of your intervention. This is where you will want to find those quantitative and qualitative research articles- look back at your notes from NURS-450 if you need a refresher.  

If you find a literature review that sums up the best practices for the intervention, look at the reference list or bibliography. See if there are any research articles you could use instead of the literature review. These articles must meet the following criteria: written by a nurse, written for a nursing audience and published in a nursing journal. If it does not meet all three criterion, you cannot use it in your literature review section. 

Does this mean you only need five articles for your entire capstone paper? 

In addition to researching your intervention, you will also need to find support information for your introduction and background sections. Providing this information will not only make you more knowledgeable about your topic but also sets the stage for introducing your intervention. For the introduction and background sections, the information provided here can come from anywhere- books, websites, summary or best-practices articles, articles from trade journals, etc. Just make sure that you evaluate the information before using it in your paper!

What is an original research article?

An original research article will have the following elements:

  • A single experiment or study conducted by the author(s)
  • Hypothesis or research questions stated
  • Methodology section with explanation of experiment or study
  • Results and data

If you do not see all of the above mentioned, most likely you are not looking at an original research article.

You will need five (5) original research studies for the literature review section of your paper. These are the types of articles that you are looking for when it comes to filling out the literature review matrix (if your professor requires it). 

Eastern Washington University Libraries. (2020, November 3). Types of scholarly articles [LibGuide]. https://research.ewu.edu/scholarly_articles/types

UCMerced Library. (2020, July 14). Types of scholarly articles [LibGuide]. https://libguides.ucmerced.edu/wri105_downey

Does your article meet the nursing criteria?

When checking to see if the original research article you found is a true nursing intervention, take a look for the following items.

  • Nursing credentials: Is there RN, DNP, or a nurse practitioner credential listed after the author's or authors' name?
  • Affiliation: Does it mention the job title or department where the author or authors work?
  • How often is 'nurse' or 'nurses' or 'nursing' mentioned in the main article? Are these terms mentioned multiple times? Is it clear that it is a nursing intervention?
  • Journal: Does the journal title mention 'nurse' or 'nursing' anywhere in the title? Does the journal category fall under 'nursing' or 'core nursing'? In CINAHL Complete, it is easy to narrow down the search to items published in nursing or core nursing journals. You will have to investigate a little in ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health and PubMed.

Why the focus on nursing?

For the literature review section, you need to focus on nursing interventions for a few reasons. They are as follows:

  • You are a nursing student completing your nursing degree. You need to show that you can do proper nursing research and that you are familiar with nursing interventions. 
  • You are presenting your intervention with the unit where you are currently doing your clinical for this course. Should the unit decide to move forward with your proposed intervention, it should be something that is within the scope of nursing practice. 
  • This is a very real-world application. When you are a RN, you will want to change something within your practice and you will want to be able to provide evidence to show your boss that the intervention has worked for other nursing units therefore it should work for your unit as well. Being able to find this evidence and prove its worth will be half the battle.

Creating and Using Search Terms

In this video, we go over what it means to do a keyword search and a subject heading search and why you should incorporate a subject heading search when you are looking for articles on your intervention. 

What about the other sections of my paper?

In the other sections of your paper, you can pull information from just about anywhere, as long as it is related to your topic! This can be:

  • Other scholarly journal articles (review articles)
  • Trade journal articles
  • Information from an organization (like the American Association of Critical Care Nursing)
  • Government reports or guidelines 
  • Standards or guidelines from the Joint Commission or the World Health Organization
  • Any information given to you by your unit (hospital policies, for example)
  • and more!

Remember, any of this information can go in your introduction and background sections, as well as your PICO(T) and conclusion. This information should not be used in your literature review section, as they do not contain specific data on how your intervention works. 

Sites to check out