One of the difficulties that many nurses experience when writing academic essays is managing the vast amount of information that arises from their literature search. If you have been following the articles in this series then you will have seen how, by progressive focusing of the literature search (part 5, Fowler, 2020a), you should aim to find about 30 articles on which to base a standard 3000-word academic essay. The problem that many students then find is ‘managing’ those 30 articles in a way that enables them to extract relevant information and include it in a structured and logical way (part 6, Fowler, 2020b) in their essay while demonstrating critical analysis and depth of writing (part 7, Fowler, 2021).
A practical approach
Whereas the previous articles have explored the more theoretical side of this process, this article gives you practical tips on how to extract, arrange and structure the information from your literature in a way that you can understand and use in your essay. The following ideas are based on my experience of running assignment workshops for both undergraduate pre-registration students and qualified nurses on postgraduate courses; even the experienced students seemed to have found the following practical approach useful.
Stage one
If you have been following this series then you should now be at a stage where you have analysed the assignment question and identified about five sections that form the structure of your plan. You will also have found about 30 pieces of literature that underpin your plan. If you try and read ‘word for word’ all 30 articles and make notes on each, then this will take several days and most people find that they are not able to comprehend this amount of information in any useful way.
The first ‘tip’ requires you to print all 30 articles, find a space in which you will not be disturbed for 3 hours and have enough space to lay out on the floor several piles of papers. Take five sheets of blank paper and write a key word or two from each of the sections of your essay plan; lay these key word sheets out on the floor in front of you. Take the first of your articles and just read the abstract or opening paragraph, don't be tempted at this stage to read any more. Having grasped the key focus of that article, place it on the relevant key word sheet on the floor. If you find that the article possibly covers two of the sections then write the article's title on a blank sheet of paper and place that copy on the other key word sheet on the floor.
Then repeat this process with the second article, then the third, and so on, ending up with about five or six articles in each section; this should take about 3 hours. Time for a break!
Stage two
Take the five or six articles from one of your sections and read each one in full. Highlight or make short notes on important points relevant to the section. Have a short coffee break then write up this section, incorporating comparative analysis as described in the previous article in this series (Fowler, 2021), making sure you keep roughly to your planned word count for this section. This stage should take about 3 hours.
Stage three
Repeat stage two for each of your identified sections, allowing about 3 hours for each section. You will find that you get quicker with practice.
Stage four
Take a step back now and review the various sections that you have written. Add up the total word count that you have used and identify if you need to cut words out, or if you have some words to spare. Think about the question set—have you answered it fully? Examine the various sections and think about adding any clinical experience to support the arguments you have made (use of clinical experience will be covered in the next article in this series). Then examine how the various sections link together and, if necessary, write one or two sentences that connect one section to the next.
Focused work
By the efficient use of about 20 hours of focused work, you have taken 30 articles and collated them in a way that gives an underpinning structure to your essay. By breaking the process down in this way you should be able not only to discuss relevant content for each section, but also to integrate comparative analysis.
The final two articles in this series will consider when it is appropriate to incorporate clinical experience into an academic essay and the importance of drawing out themes during the various sections and building those themes into your final conclusions.