LITERATURE REVIEW
Topic of Choice: The healing power of physical touch in adult nursing: does physical touch influence patients health?
You might find a lot of literature and so justifying / deciding on how to limit and which papers to include may require you to think about a specific group of patients or specific area of adult nursing. See how you go along but if you find 100 relevant papers then choose a reason to limit it to 15-20 rather than ‘randomly’ choose those to include.
Alternatively you may find a lot written but poor / weak research and you may be able to limit just based on those papers with specific / strong method.
Components of a Literature Review
- Introduction
- Introduce your topic with reference to the literature / research and state if your chosen topic is an area that has been widely researched or not. The literature review is to focus on a nursing issue or have a nursing focus on your chosen topic.
- State the purpose
- Provide a rationale for choosing this topic.
- Identify how you went about gathering information, i.e. manual search and use of databases.
- Identify the origin of articles selected and the type of research design e.g. descriptive / experimental research design studies.
- Identify dates, i.e. last ten years
- Identify search or key words used.
- Main sections – Headings/Subheadings
- Define any terms that may be ambiguous within the text.
- Provide headings for the main themes. You will be guided from the literature that you have read as to the areas of interest you should focus on. The themes should reflect the recurring ideas that have emerged from the literature.
- Critically review the relevant literature under each theme.
- Outline briefly what you are going to focus on in each theme.
- Provide a brief summary of the main points at the end of each theme before moving on to your next main heading.
- Remember to review the literature focusing on the primary purpose of the literature review.
- Anecdotal evidence should be used sparingly and clearly identified to the reader.
- Critique individual research studies. The following format is a suggestion as to what to include in a critique of literature:
- Author (year).
- Type of study i.e. quantitative/ qualitative
- Design of the study i.e. survey, correlation, experimental etc.
- Number of participants/subjects.
- Type of sample i.e. random/convenient.
- Setting where the study was carried out i.e. a large teaching hospital in London, UK.
- Aim of the study.
- Methods used to collect data i.e. questionnaire, interview, observations etc.
- Some information on the type of themes focused on and/or assessment tools utilised to measure the investigating phenomenon.
- Validity of these tools.
- Findings – a summary of the pertinent findings only. Refrain from long descriptive accounts.
- Some discussion to follow on the relevance/importance of the findings to the area under investigation: What can be learned from this?
(You do not have to stick rigidly to the sequencing of the first six points, i.e. you might like to commence with the author (year) and the aim of the study. Then progress to the type of study, number of participants, etc. All other sections should follow in the sequences outlined above.)
- Conclusion
- you may commence by stating the purpose of this literature review was to….
- Then provide a summary of all the different items that were discussed.
- Remember you are recapping on the main points of your review so you do not introduce any new research/themes.
- You can however make suggestions for further research to be carried out into certain aspects of your chosen topic.
- Finish off with an overall concluding statement.
- Reference List
- would be expected that at least 15-20 papers are reviewed in detail.
