Promoting Critical Thinking and Academic Writing Skills in Nursing Education

Promoting Critical Thinking and Academic Writing Skills in Nursing Education

Nursing education in the USA starts from high school where students interested in the field are advised to excel in Biology, Chemistry and English. Competency in these fields make the pursuit of nursing at tertiary level simpler at the start. There are two options for pursuing tertiary nursing education. The first is the Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) which takes two years to complete and is offered by Community Colleges. It focuses on imparting specialized technical skills. There is also the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) Degree which takes four years to complete. BSN graduates will have learned nursing in fullscope - from a technical, theoretical and contextual point of view.

Undergraduate qualification is not the end of the road for nursing. In fact it is not the beginning proper. For one to become a Registered Nurse (RN) in the USA, it is mandatory to get licensure by completing the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). It is possible to get a nursing job in a particular State with this certification. Nurses can pursue Graduate education to advance their knowledge and practice. Options for post-graduate education in nursing are Master of Science in Nursing (MSN), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) or Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) 

Critical Thinking Skills in Nursing Education

Nursing education entails gaining clinical knowledge and the profession is also considered a calling. Nurses are expected to be compassionate individuals. This is not the only soft skill a nurse needs though. Critical thinking is another soft skill that nurses continuously develop in their career from what they build in school. This particular skill enables nurses to do proper assessment and make more accurate decisions.

Critical thinking skills come into use in nursing when, for instance, a nurse addresses medical and administrative issues in his or her daily routine. The former will involve interpreting information like lab reports, carrying out analysis to determine a patient’s problem, justifying one’s actions by explaining to colleagues and patients. Self-regulation is another component of critical thinking that serves well the trial and error nature of treatment approach as it guarantees patient safety.

Critical thinking contributes to a nurse not only becoming a better professional but also a well-rounded individual. How so? Development of critical thinking skills leads to development of other personal attributes like creativity and confidence. Critical thinking skills also lead to better approaches to teamwork and resolution of conflict as demonstration of interpersonal skills development.

Academic Writing Skills in Nursing Education

Critical Thinking skills also come into use when carrying out academic nursing writing assignments. A student becomes able to express his or her ideas with clarity and have insight to point to relationships between variables. This is a great thing because writing makes up to 35% of a nurse’s daily activities. If one becomes an excellent academic nursing writer then one has an improved chance of becoming a highly successful nurse.

Academic nursing writing comes in many formats like essays and research papers. But they all test students on the same four types of academic writing. There is descriptive writing which requires a student to detail facts, analytical writing for showing relationships between variables, persuasive writing for sharing one’ point of view and critical writing which requires that the author (student) breakdown multiple points of view including one’s own.

Imparting academic writing skills in nursing education is worthwhile because excelling in it determines the possibility of successfully completing a nursing academic program. Nursingwritingservices.com is a professional writing services provider that helps students and registered nurses author world class manuscripts. The academic writing skill gained in nursing education serves a purpose even in the professional setting as a nurse will always be able to write with clarity and in proper format.

Improving Critical Thinking and Academic Writing Skills

The best way to begin improving critical thinking and academic writing in nursing education is by picking the right approach. Critical thinking requires thorough investigation of a problem while academic writing needs indepth research. Therefore, it is good practice to adopt a bottom-up mindset when tackling challenges in both domains. This method normalizes evidence-based conclusions which lead to better targeted solutions to problems and a firm basis for a nursing academic writing assignment.

A second lesson to impart is on eliminating bias when engaged in academic writing or critically thinking over an issue. The reason is because bias will taint the conclusions and more often than not lead to incorrect answers - so to speak. How do you eliminate bias in academic writing and critical thinking? For the latter, nursing education teaches students on how to map their thinking process. Combine this with the practice on evidence-based conclusion and it becomes easy to pin-point where biases come in. Bias is eliminated in academic writing by relying on research methodology or arriving at conclusions logically drawn from research undertaken.

Nursing education also encourages students to gain experiential knowledge in these two areas by attaching themselves to mentors. For academic writing, this would be more accomplished writers or simply reading and writing more academic papers to get feedback on quality of authorship. How about critical thinking skills? It is good practice to observe the decision-making techniques of more experienced nurses and even ask them for advice. Joining professional nursing networking groups is another avenue of gaining these critical thinking skills.

It is necessary that nursing education continues training students on critical thinking and academic writing skills. This will maintain the condition of education institutions churning out well-developed nurses. These nurses not only go on to provide the essential service of medical care support but they also become equipped with knowledge on how to conceptualize improving the nursing profession.

 
 

Improving Academic Writing in Nursing Education

Improving Academic Writing in Nursing Education

Is nursing a calling? Many people seem to believe so. The reason for this is that nursing requires a selfless dedication that is not typically observed in other professions. Nurses have to put in a lot of time and possess attributes like empathy to be directed at the patient. Communication skills are another major soft skill that successful nurses possess. It allows them to effectively communicate with patients and colleagues. There are several other skills that constitute communication skills, one of which is academic writing.

Academic nursing writing is a hard skill and is a necessary skill to acquire in order to pass a class or whatever specialized nursing undergraduate program one is undertaking. Many writing assignments are issued at different intervals and nursing students are expected to meet the obligation of successfully completing and submitting them. This task is not always possible for a good number of nursing students. One reason for this is because they lack time to dedicate themselves to completing the particular academic nursing writing assignment. Many others are not experienced with the scholarly writing process and are therefore incapable of consistently producing great assignments that will give them good grades.

Professional Nursing Writing Service
Academic nursing writing services have cropped up to address this gap in nursing education. A proper writing services provider employs highly qualified writers, has a track record of producing world class articles in a timely manner and sets affordable charges. The only company that meets the criteria is Nursingwritingservices.com. We help students from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand pass their nursing writing assignments. We can also help you!

Academic Writing Skills Needed in Nursing

There are many different types of academic writing papers written in nursing education. The most common ones that we handle are listed below:

  • Nursing Essays
  • Nursing care plans
  • SOAP Notes
  • Research Papers
  • Laboratory Reports
  • Case Studies

    Each of them have their own formats and specific objectives. For instance, essays require the author to arrive at his or her own opinion over an issue. All the same, all types of academic nursing writing test proficiency on the four types of writing - descriptive, analytical, persuasive and critical.

    Descriptive writing requires that a nursing student demonstrates his or her proficiency in detailing facts. The instruction on the assignment may guide the student to “identify” or “define”. It is appropriate when detailing the method of collecting data or sharing findings of such an exercise. How is descriptive writing useful in a professional setting? The nurse can use techniques learnt from academia to improve his or her methods of writing down guides or instructions to colleagues and patients respectively and increase the chances of successful treatment outcomes.

    Analytical writing is required when there is an objective to demonstrate relationship between variables. The relationship could be of any kind. For example, in concept analysis papers a nursing student will have to detail the antecedents and consequences of his or her idea. Analytical writing improves critical thinking skills leading to better decision making in both professional and personal settings.

    Persuasive writing is another competency that nursing students have to demonstrate in nursing education. It is particularly useful for BSN and postgraduate students who need to develop the capability of not only conceptualizing unique ideas and views but also make strong cases for them. Unfortunately, many students mistakenly believe that there is not room for one’s point of view in academic writing. This is perhaps because of how much the notion that academic writing should be objective has been hammered down. The truth is that there is space in academic papers to include one’s opinion as long as it is developed logically from preceding written material.

    Last but not least, there is critical writing. It incorporates the techniques or purposes of the aforementioned types of academic nursing writing. A student will have to consider multiple points of views not too dissimilar to the manner one’s own opinion is considered in persuasive writing. A student will also have to be good at descriptive and analytical writing to be objective and single out the relationship between concepts or findings.

Format in Academic Writing

Academic Writing is not complete without format. The formats may seem like unnecessary bureaucracy but they exist because of the time-honored traditions of academic writing and the fact that standardized formats make it easier for anyone to go through an academic nursing writing paper. This has made it easier for information about nursing to be shared across the globe highlighting issues and disseminating new ideas. All academic papers in nursing need to be written using the American Psychological Association (APA) format. It is the format of choice for both natural and social sciences. One of the criteria for APA formatting is to arrange references by the author’s last name and in alphabetical order. Other guidelines include double spacing and use of a size 12 formal style font like “Times New Romans.” Nursing education should also intensify learning on what constitutes the different sections of academic papers. It is not enough to know what section goes where. For instance, the Title and Abstract can be referred to as summary sections. They contain only summarized content which informs a reader what the paper is about. Many students confuse the Abstract with the Introduction section. Do you know what constitutes what? The Abstract is written after all sections of the paper have been completed. It summarizes the purpose, results and conclusion of the particular paper. The Introduction, on the other hand, goes into detail on purpose of the paper as the author develops a justification for writing the paper. Context must also be developed to make justification for the paper clearer.

 

 

A Guide to Scholarly Writing in Nursing

A Guide to Scholarly Writing in Nursing

Scholarly writing is the standard format of expressing and sharing detailed ideas in academia. It has a tradition stretching back to the 1600s. The initial goal for academic writing was to ensure proper attribution of ideas to those who conceptualized them. Nowadays standardization of academic writing makes it easy for ideas to be shared across the globe and the approach to this is largely similar across academic fields, including nursing.

Nursing students and professional nurses pursuing postgraduate education have to write papers like research projects, case studies and essays. The papers are completed in order to demonstrate in depth understanding of a topic or share novel ideas for the purpose of passing a class or getting published in journal publications. The process for the latter is much more rigorous as it requires a nurse to pass the review of an editor and his or her peers to get featured in such a publication. A lot more goes into it than the quality of ideas because the number of submissions made by others in nursing education far outweighs the spots for nursing journal article publication.

This fact makes it critical that a nurse develops a habit of consistently producing world class academic nursing writings. It is not always possible to have time to meet this objective. This makes it practically a-must to resort to professional academic nursing writing services such as those we offer as Nursingwritingservices.com. </span >

Competencies Tested in Scholarly Writing in Nursing
 

The types of scholarly papers written in nursing may be different but they all test nursing students on the same four competencies. A nursing student is required to demonstrate that he or she excels in descriptive writing, analytical writing, persuasive writing and critical writing. Skills in these types of writing manifest individually or in combination.

Descriptive writing requires a student or registered nurse to demonstrate competency in detailing facts. It is used in scholarly writing to explain methods of data collection, analysis and share results of such an exercise. Descriptive writing trains the author to be objective as he or she is only detailing observations and that is relevant because objectivity is a required attribute for a successful nursing career.

Analytical writing requires more out of the author. A student will be required to highlight relationships between variables. This requires critical thinking skills to evaluate matters beyond the superficial level. In scholarly writing, an instance where analytical writing comes into play is when discussing the results of a research undertaking.

Persuasive and Critical writing are practically the same. They test the writer on his or her analytical and descriptive writing skills while prompting them to include their own views. So, what is the difference between the two? Persuasive writing requires the writer to only argue out his or her own view as is done in essays. Critical writing tests the writer’s ability to not only argue out his or her own views but also hold them in light of objective evaluation of the views of other authors.

Structure is Key in Scholarly Writing
 

Scholarly writing in nursing emphasizes correct format as intention is to make ideas easily shareable across cultures. This is why scholarly writing is predominantly done in one language. This is not the only standardization that nursing students will have to adhere to. Despite the variety of academic nursing papers, they will all generally have a similar guideline on how to structure the way information is presented. Each bit of information has to go in the correct section otherwise the paper will not be considered a good one. The sections that make up practically all academic papers in nursing are:

1. Title
2. Abstract
3. Introduction
4. Literature Review
5. Conclusion and Recommendations
6. References

There is a slight difference between case studies and research papers on what follows the Literature Review. The latter has the Method, Result and Discussion sections that go into detail on data collection and analysis techniques plus relationships that become evident from the exercise. The former has the Critical Analysis section that provides space for the author to develop his or her arguments on a case study based on evidence observed, of course.

What should go into the other sections? Students are not always sure and end up mixing up information and thus clouding clarity of information presented in their paper. We will briefly go through each section to inform you on what to write the next time you have an academic nursing writing assignment.

Title: The Title is supposed to specifically describe contents of the paper. This means that it should contain all important elements that capture what the paper is about such that an individual who will opt not to read the paper understands what it is about. In the same vein, the Title of a scholarly writing in nursing should never be a teaser. Abstract: The Abstract is another summary section of a scholarly paper. But it is only written after the other sections have been completed. This is because it summarizes the purpose, findings and conclusion of the paper. Background information and citations should never be in the Abstract but Keywords should be present.

Introduction: The Introduction is the section where background information provides context for writing the paper. The problem should be well identified plus goals and justification for solving it. Nursing students should desist from making the Introduction section too long.

Literature Review: This is arguably the section that most individuals in nursing education have a problem writing. The Literature Review indeed tests whether you have a good grasp on scholarly writing. It is supposed to be the section where the author critically evaluates research that has been done around his or her chosen topic. The sources should be authoritative, the extent of citation should be wide yet relevant and both similar and different ideas should be assessed by the author. Unfortunately, many nursing students reduce this section to a chronological listing of past research.

Conclusion and Recommendation: This is a space for the author to include his or her own views. But they must be logically developed from preceding material in the paper. And new ideas should never be introduced when concluding the paper otherwise clarity of information will be lost.

References: This is the final part of scholarly writing. It credits the sources of information that an author has utilized to express his ideas. Failure to properly attribute work is ground for plagiarism, which is right about the worst thing one can do in scholarly writing. The technique used to reference, cite and even organize scholarly writing in nursing is the American Psychological Association (APA) style.

 

 
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Academic Skills in Nursing and Midwifery

Academic Skills in Nursing and Midwifery

Nursing and midwifery are standalone professions in as much as they can be combined. Nurses require formal education and their expertise is required in a wider domain of healthcare services. For instance, nurses improve the quality of patient life in adult nursing. Their function extends beyond clinical knowledge in mental health and children nursing when they support community-based approaches to healthcare services and address child protection issues respectively.

Midwives area of practice is much narrower and they do not typically require formal education. They learn by hands-on experience. Their expertise covers pregnancy, delivery, gynecology and health education in related areas. Despite this high specialty, midwives are critical because child-birth is a defining aspect of women’s healthcare and lives in general.

It is also possible to combine both expertise in the title of nurse-midwife. In the USA, certification for expertise in nursing and midwifery is issued by the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM). Nurse-midwives get deployed in hospitals, clinics and in support of community healthcare. The approach in practice in this field is individualized and non-intervention medical care. </span >

Just as with any professional field, nursing and midwifery selects for individuals with particular attributes. In particular, a nurse-midwife should be someone inclined to help people, has empathy, is detail oriented and can remain composed in stressful situations. One needs to demonstrate academic competency as well and this is achieved by excelling in the following five areas:

1. Time Management
2. Listening
3. Reading
4. Research
5. Writing
6. Examinations

Time Management skills
 

Time management skills is arguably the key component of academic success in nursing and midwifery. It allows an individual to meet all of his or her obligations and aspirations. The basis of managing one’s time properly is setting goals that make it simpler to determine what to prioritize. This makes it possible to meet a variety of deadlines despite varying levels of complexities of tasks to be done.

Schedules are the tools used to ensure adherence to proper time management. Nurses and midwives use both weekly and daily planners to allocate themselves enough time to attend to patients. This is necessary because their time is usually constrained by a heavy demand for their services or presence. In addition to actual medical care, they have to spend up to 35% of their time carrying out documentation as part of their administrative duties.

Listening Skills
 

Listening is a necessary academic skill in nursing and midwifery because a student will spend a fair share of his time attending lectures. Information on course plans and tips on how to excel in the course will often be shared in lecture halls. This means that in addition to developing the discipline to attend lectures, one is required to fully concentrate on the lecturer’s words when in attendance.

How can you know that you are actively listening to a lecture? The only way is by demonstrating proactiveness to the matter being discussed. This can be done by taking notes to highlight the most important bits of information. The other way is by being proactive and turning the communication into a discussion at every chance you get - like asking questions.

Reading Skills
 

A student of nursing and midwifery should set his goals for reading in order to make the most out of the activity. A goal of reading could be to go through advanced content, comprehend a concept, understand details or instruction and to come across new ideas. The information derived from these goals is then instilled by use of the 3Rs approach of Read, Recite and Review.

Use of schedules and reading plenty of material will get even more out of the reading experience. It is also a good habit to be courageous enough to expose oneself to even more challenging topics and styles of writing in nursing and midwifery. This is a way to become a well-rounded student.

Research Skills
 

Research is a defining feature of academia. All students in nursing and midwifery should be able to collect data, interpret and evaluate its meaning. This should be topped by being able to present the information to the intended audience. The presentation may be oral, requiring use of visual tools like presentation software. Presentation may also be in written form, as is typically the case, to be reviewed by other academics.

It is impossible to conduct good research without good sources of data. Data has to be derived from authoritative sources for it to pass standards required in academia. Therefore, research encourages analytical thinking to make decisions on what to trust. Nevertheless, sources of data for nursing and midwifery remain broad with the web, journals and textbooks being just a few mines of information.

 

Writing Skills
 

There are different types of academic nursing writing that would each need their own articles to comprehensively go over. But they all test nursing and midwifery students on the same writing skills. Students should be able to evaluate literature through critical writing. He or she should also be able to share objective information by descriptive writing and assess relationships between variables through analytical writing. Last but not least, a student should be able to make a case for his or her own views and ideas through persuasive writing.

A research paper will require these competencies to be demonstrated in different sections of the writing. The sections of a research paper are:

SECTION

WHAT TO BE ADDRESSED

TITLE

Topic being studied

ABSTRACT

Summary of findings of the study

INTRODUCTION

Justification and context for study

LITERATURE REVIEW

Critical evaluation of related studies

METHOD

Data collection technique

RESULTS

Finding from measurement of data

DISCUSSION

Analysis of result

RECOMMENDATION

Conclusion drawn from result

REFERENCES

Sources of information

Examination Skills
 

Examinations make students anxious and many have even suggested that exams should be done away with. But they remain a standard way of objectively assessing the competencies of students in a field of study. Students who wish to excel in examinations need to understand that preparation is the key. And this takes many forms - from healthy living to developing a study.

 
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Writing as a Professional Nurse

Writing as a Professional Nurse

Writing in the profession of writing is majorly about documenting knowledge. This manifests as record keeping to ensure every step of a treatment plan is comprehensively captured. The documented work is necessary for coordinating allocation of hospital resources, charting treatment plans and guiding the approach to be used for similar circumstances in the future.

A professional nurse should also expect to be involved in academic nursing writing. Therefore, the knowledge developed in this domain during the years of study should not be discarded. Progress in academic qualification status opens the door for a nurse to move up the ladder in his or her career to achieve more fulfilment in terms of nursing practice and income. An example of writing professional nurses do is a concept analysis paper.

Academic nursing writing puts the analytical skills of a professional nurse to the test. The nurse needs to demonstrate his or her knowledge of a concept by reviewing work done by other researchers, in the particular field, and coming up with his or her own conclusions from the information compiled. Exploring research is a difficult activity because it requires a lot of reading and intuition to identify research that is related to the topic one is analyzing or carrying out a study on.

The stress of academic nursing writing has pushed many professional nurses to opt for professional nursing writing services. Nursingwritingservices.com is the best nursing writing services provider in the USA. We not only write but help our customers conceptualize topics and edit their work. </span >

What are the Challenges of Writing as a Professional Nurse?
 

Our experience in handling nursing essays for practicing nurses has led us to find out that the main writing challenge professional nurses face is a lack of time. They are distracted by their duties, such as administering medication, so they end up making writing mistakes. Nurses are also typically busy and find it difficult to appropriately dedicate time to complete academic nursing writing assignments.

Other nurses are not well-educated on scholarly nursing writing and as such are never able to write proper nursing essays. It takes years of practice to familiarize oneself with all the traditions or formats in academic nursing writing. This will present a problem because there is no such room for learning when nursing writing assignments are required within tight timelines.

The workaround by Nursingwritingservices.com to the problem has been to employ registered nurses, from the USA and UK, who are adept at scholarly nursing writing to address the problem for our customers. They start working on customer orders immediately so never suffer from a lack of time either. The customer reviews we receive is evidence of us keeping our promise of quality nursing writing and all done in good time.

Writing and Career Development for Professional Nurses
 

Communication skills are one of the competencies that an individual needs to succeed in the career of nursing. Writing skill is one aspect of communication but it is put to use a disproportionate amount of time, as aforementioned. Writing communicates the appropriate information to colleagues, patients and their families.

Analytical nursing writing helps a professional nurse further develop his or her critical thinking skills. This will improve his or her decision making when it comes to the strategic choice of a treatment plan or the tactical decision of applying a technique to aid a patient suffering from a disease or in pain from an injury. When this skill is accredited through attainment of higher, so to speak, academic qualification then a professional nurse will get to a career status of working autonomously. This is removed from the common yet wrong perception of nurses as merely helping hands for physicians.

The best practices for every professional nurse to follow when writing are as listed and further explained below:

1. Following Proper Format
2. Being Objective
3. Being Logical
4. Following Grammar Rules

It is important to write with the audience in mind. Typically, in nursing, there will be tradition on how every type of writing should be presented. In the professional setting, this may be further defined by the culture in the institution a nurse is deployed. Adhering to these traditions or format of writing makes it more convenient to put your message across to your colleagues. This will develop the organization skills of any professional nurse as well.

Academic nursing writing is more complex when it comes to format. The formats that have been established as norms for different types of academic nursing writing have to be identifiable by nurses and evaluators anywhere on the globe. Research is the most common type of writing done by professional nurses and its format will be familiar. Unfortunately, even professional nurses find it difficult to present their research in the appropriate format because of the aforementioned challenges of time and inexperience.

A nursing research paper consists of the Title, Abstract, Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and References sections. The advice that students get over these sections remains the same for professional nurses. Analytical, Critical, Persuasive and Descriptive writing skills must manifest in the appropriate sections.

A professional nurse should ensure that his or her writing is objective. This is achieved by excluding emotion and opinion, such as using ‘I’ and ‘We’, when carrying out writing assignments. The objectivity is necessary because professional nursing writing serves as a data point to guide future treatment plans.

Part of objectivity is ensuring that all writing is detailed enough to include all relevant happenings. There should be no phrases included that can be deleted and meaning is retained. Detail is important for audit purposes because the writing can be used as evidence in a court of law. The details should be written down in a logical manner that prevents confusion in meaning to colleagues and patients.

It goes without saying that the grammar rules should be followed. The correct tone and proper words are needed to accurately express meaning. All in all, practice is what will lead to a professional nurse becoming a better writer.

 

 
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