Assignment Task

Task 1- Review of Literature

Task Description

This assessment requires you to critically evaluate, synthesise and present findings from relevant literature on an aspect of your specialist nursing practice. You should:

• Decide on your topic/question. Keep this focused and limited in scope to enable you to critically evaluate (critique) all relevant literature. Ensure there is sufficient quality, critiqued literature to carry out a review,
• Once you have decided on a topic, please start your own separate thread in the discussion space in MyLO under questions on Assessment 1 and confirm your topic with the unit coordinator,
• Collect the relevant literature and outline your search strategy as discussed in the rubric, presentation on searching literature and the weekly teachings,
• Aim for 15-25 quality critiqued pieces of scholarly literature, depending on how much literature has been written on your chosen topic,
• Analyse, critique (using the equator network), synthesise, and thematically analyse the literature, providing hard statistics (if quantitative) or details about the research and participant numbers (if qualitative); looking at areas where authors agree or disagree; the range of different methodologies used and any methodological problems you can perceive; level of evidence; exemplary studies;
• obvious gaps in the research literature, and or unsupported assumptions.
• When you write, you should briefly outline the development of the literature around your topic over time, summarise, thematically analyse, synthesise, and critique the literature, and discuss your findings and relate them to previous knowledge.
• In your conclusion you must answer the research question you have asked and also provide nursing recommendations derived from your extensive reading on the topic.

Task 2 – Practice Change Proposal

Task Description

This item of assessment is a clinical Practice Change Proposal to be carried out in your workplace setting. Please do not confuse this with your previous Project Development assessments nor education initiatives (Practice Development) nor use any of your previous topics.

You should identify a practice change in your workplace and a suitable evidence-based alternative approach appropriate for your area of practice that you would like to see piloted/introduced.

Develop your idea into a proposal suitable for submission to your practice setting manager for consideration. This will be the first step in the change process.

You will need to:

• Provide a background to the project, including a brief/mini-review of literature to contextualise the project, justify your proposal with evidence and identify the potential benefits to your workplace,
• Develop realistic aims and objectives,
• Describe and apply one or more theory, model or framework of implementation that you will use to assist you in achieving your practice change,
• Provide a realistic budget, investigating possible sources of funding, timeline and possible risks for your proposal,
• Discuss methods of evaluation of your practice change.

Please note you do not have to actually submit your Practice Change Proposal to your clinical manager. Further instructions and a template are available in MyLO. More detailed information will be provided in, the presentation on Assessment 2, the weekly teaching announcements, and in MyLO to assist you with this assessment piece.

Task 3 – Paper for publication

Task Description

Decide on an innovative topic from your practice and select an appropriate peer-reviewed journal. You may choose to write a case study, literature review (of which there are different types), a discussion paper or other (as suggested in your chosen journal).

Select an appropriate nursing peer-reviewed journal for both your topic, your article type and your style of writing. Download the ‘Guidelines for Authors’ provided by that journal and write your paper according to those guidelines; if they differ from the School’s requirements (e.g. a different referencing style), then this takes precedence over our usual UTAS rules.

You must provide these instructions as a separate document appendix when you submit the paper for marking.

Please note you must be the only author of the paper - collaborative papers will not be accepted for grading. You do not have to have your paper submitted to a journal. Your mark will indicate the readiness of your paper for submission.