NUR 550 Part B literature review: a planning guide

The brief's own structure tells you where the difficulty is. Part A of the synthesis asks for the main components of each article — subjects, methods, key findings — plus a rationale for how each supports your PICOT. Part B asks you to compare and contrast the articles. Most reviews do Part A well and then treat Part B as a paragraph noting that the studies broadly agree. That inverts the value: summarising five studies is comprehension, and comparing them is the synthesis the assignment is named for. Plan the word budget accordingly: at 1,250 to 1,500 words, five articles at roughly 120 words each leaves you around 500 for the introduction, methods, Part B and the gaps, which is tight and is the correct distribution. Write Part B before Part A if you can, since knowing what you want to compare tells you which components of each study are worth describing.

Start from the search constraint, because it is narrower than it looks. Five peer-reviewed primary source translational research articles rules out a good deal of what a database returns first. Primary source excludes reviews and meta-analyses, however useful; translational research means work moving evidence toward practice rather than basic science; and all five must sit within the last five years alongside your other sources. Search with those filters applied from the start rather than assessing candidates afterwards, and record your inclusion criteria as you go, since the Methods section of this paper is precisely an account of how you chose. If a study you want is a review rather than a primary source, use it to find primary studies through its reference list instead of including it. Translational is the constraint students most often misread: it means research aimed at moving findings into practice, so implementation studies, effectiveness trials in real settings and quality initiatives all qualify, while laboratory and mechanism work does not.

The Methods section is short and it is where markers see whether the search was real. Say which databases you used, what terms and limits you applied, how many results you screened and on what basis you kept five. That is a paragraph, and it converts the review from a set of articles you happened to find into a search someone else could repeat. It also gives you something concrete to say about the strength of your evidence base, which the Areas of Further Study section will need. Be honest if the search was hard — a narrow field with few primary translational studies is itself a finding about the state of the evidence, and reporting it is better than implying five perfect articles were waiting. Markers see a great many of these reviews, and a candid methods paragraph reads as more competent than a smooth one.

Part B is where the actual thinking happens and it needs an axis. Comparing studies means asking the same question of each and reporting where the answers diverge: do they define the population the same way, use the same outcome measure, run for comparable durations, agree on effect direction and size? Divergence is more informative than agreement, and a real finding might be that two studies measured different things and are therefore not in agreement at all. Where the five do agree, say whether that agreement is independent or whether they share a design limitation that would produce the same result regardless. Three or four dimensions is enough to structure the section: population definition, intervention delivery, outcome measure and follow-up length will separate most sets of five studies. Say what each divergence implies for your PICOT rather than only noting it, because a difference with no consequence is an observation rather than a synthesis.

Areas of Further Study asks specifically for what is known, unknown, and requires further study, which is three categories rather than a general call for more research. Known means claims your five articles jointly support. Unknown means questions none of them addressed. Requires further study is narrower still — a question that matters for your PICOT and that current designs could not answer, usually because of sample, duration or measurement. Naming a gap that your own PICOT depends on is the strongest way to close the review, since it explains why your project is needed. Avoid the reflexive closing line calling for more research in general; it is true of every field and says nothing about this one. A specific gap — a population not yet studied, an outcome never measured beyond six months, an intervention tested only where staffing was generous — is both more useful and much harder to write without having read the studies properly.

On mechanics: 1,250 to 1,500 words, five to ten sources published within the last five years and appropriate for nursing content, an introduction describing the clinical issue, and submission to LopesWrite. Keep the PICOT statement visible throughout — the rationale clause in Part A means every article has to be tied back to it, and a review whose articles are individually relevant but collectively unfocused is the commonest way this assignment loses marks. One quick test before submitting: read only your five rationale sentences in sequence. If they do not describe one coherent question, the article set needs changing rather than the prose.