Nursing students are probably the most frequent visitors to Study Skills. As they have to balance the needs of placement and academic life — which each require different forms of writing — they often need support when transitioning between the two mindsets. To help better support these students, I have gathered a number of online resources based on regularly occurring topics, from the more general requests for help with critical writing to the relatively subject-specific problem of incorporating personal reflection.
Writing Critically
As the writing done in placement is primarily descriptive, depicting events as specifically and clearly as possible, the sudden transition to writing critically and incorporating more analysis can be difficult. Helpful resources:
Balancing Descriptive Versus Critical Writing – this is a subject I wrote about on here in 2020. While I often find that simply reminding the students to explain why the evidence or details they have included are important to know helps, this post includes a table that asks more questions dependent on the kind of description used.
This guide from the University of Suffolk also discusses critical writing, but specifically in relation to nursing and health sciences. It even gives helpful suggestions related to sentence structure and possible phrasing!
The Reflective Essay
The biggest issue I usually see in reflective essays is that the students don’t fully understand how to weave the idea of reflection and essay together. This can often manifest in a structure that doesn’t work, with the reflection described at the beginning and then never brought up again in the rest of the essay, and so failing to fulfil the purpose of the reflective essay.
Learning Skills for Nursing Students (Davis et al., 2011) – This book discusses a number of things a nursing student may encounter, including general writing skills and evidence-based practice, but, most relevantly, it covers reflection from a nursing perspective. In this chapter, it goes through what reflection is, why it is important, and discusses a number of models which can be used to facilitate reflection.
Critical Thinking and Writing for Nursing Students (Price and Harrington, 2010) – this book focuses more specifically on how nursing students can/should write, including chapters on writing analytical essays and writing reflective essays. The reflective essay chapter makes clear what the student is expected to do in this type of writing, along with discussing possible models to use and general best practice.
Reflection (Oxford Brookes University) – this site shares many of the same useful traits of the previous listings but the element that makes it most useful (from my perspective, at least) is the linking of theory and practice. As noted above, the reoccurring issue with reflective essays appears to be the disconnect between the reflection and the rest of the essay – the linking theory and practice section of this site gives the students examples of how to do that.
APA 7
Obviously if the student is having issues with referencing, the best person for them to speak to is their Academic Support Librarian, but sometimes they raise issues unexpectedly in a one-to-one.
The APA Style website – very helpful, lets students easily locate the type of resource they’re referencing and then shows them the format to use. It also has style and grammar guidance, including active vs passive voice and bias-free language.
Conclusion
Obviously, this is just a snapshot of some of the most common issues raised by nursing students based on my own experience. I’d love to know any other frequently occurring topics and resources that might help, so feel free to share in the comments!
Writing Together / 'Sgwennu gyda'n Gilydd 