Approaches to Nursing Research Essay Writing

Sometime nursing as a discipline is treated somewhat condescendingly – people tend to perceive its theoretical part as a formality greatly overshadowed by practice. It is, however, very far from truth, as anybody, who actually studies it, knows. A nursing essay writing must meet rigid requirements, probably more rigid than a lot of other essay types. On the one hand, it presupposes a solid practical basis; on the other hand, it should be a piece of genuine research, with trustworthy and relevant sources, correct citation and so on. If you think that it is an easy thing to pull off – you are very mistaken, and here are some reasons why.

Problems with Writing a Nursing Essay

First and foremost, it is sources of information. Nursing requires a lot of highly specialized texts which are often not all that easy to come by, especially if you need them at short notice. The Internet may not be enough – although you may get some hints as to which books you need and where you can get them, at the end of the day you may still need to go to a library or even a buy a book or ten. If you are used to get most of your information from Wikipedia – forget about it. For writing a research essay you need to tap into much less general knowledge than Wikipedia provides. There is, however, one use for it – in notes you will generally find a lot of references to books, magazine publications, online articles and other sources that may turn out to be useful for you. Some of the links may be dead, but at least you will be able to get the book titles, so it will be easier to find them offline if necessary.

Tips on Writing a Nursing Research Essay

If you have problems starting you essay, try to overcome your psychological inertia first. Usually students leave it for later, but you may actually start with preparing the formatting of your paper – most nursing programs use APA format, so it is probably what you need as well. But to be on the safe side don’t forget to consult your tutor. Prepare the title page, the margins and everything else, following one of the numerous online guides to APA formatting. After that, prepare your sources. A good way not only to find sources but also read fragments from them is Google Books Search – there you can find innumerable useful texts and read excerpts from them, completely free of charge. If your research essay isn’t a big one, it may be even enough to complete it. However, no matter how good it is, expect to make at least a couple of trips to good old libraries – many of them have electronic catalogues, so you will probably not spend a lot of time there. Nevertheless, plan accordingly – it won’t do if you discover that you lack a couple of vital sources the day before you are supposed to submit your paper.