NSG 5002 concept synthesis paper personal philosophy

The word doing the work in the title is synthesis, and the brief reinforces it by saying the paper should integrate these discrete elements. That instruction is the difference between a pass and a strong grade here, because the four required sections invite a paper written as four separate documents with a shared title page. What integration means in practice is that the metaparadigm section should be visibly informed by the autobiography, the practice-specific concepts should arise from the same experience, and the propositions should connect concepts you have already defined rather than introducing new ones. Draft the propositions early, even roughly, because they are the join, and a paper written in order tends to reach them with nothing left to connect. Starting from the propositions also tells you early whether your chosen concepts can be connected at all, which is a discovery worth making before three pages exist.

The autobiography is one page and it has a job beyond introducing you. It should supply the experience the rest of the paper reasons from, which means selecting incidents and phases that bear on the concepts you intend to develop. A chronological career summary — where you trained, where you worked, what you did next — has spent a sixth of the paper on material that never returns. Choose two or three formative experiences and say what each one taught you about what nursing is for, and the section becomes load-bearing. The brief's instruction to include factors that guided decision making points in exactly this direction. Selecting for relevance also makes the section far easier to write, since a chronology has to be complete and a selection only has to be justified. Say what each experience taught you about what nursing is for. Two or three formative episodes are enough, and more than that crowds the concepts out.

The metaparadigm section requires documentation from the literature, which is a specific requirement and not a general instruction to cite. Your perspective on person, health, environment and nursing has to be stated as your position and then placed against published positions, agreeing or disagreeing explicitly. This is where naming the required theorist matters. A framework built around the patient's fundamental needs and the nurse's role in performing activities the patient would perform unaided, given the necessary strength, will or knowledge, gives you a strong and specific position on nursing and on person, a functional one on health, and comparatively little on environment. Notice that unevenness and say so, because that is the analytical content of this section. Noticing where the theory is thin also gives you something to argue, which is otherwise hard in a section that asks you to state four positions. Say which of the four you had to source from outside the required theorist.

The two practice-specific concepts are where most papers become generic and where a marker's attention lands. Concepts such as caring, communication or advocacy are true of all nursing and therefore say nothing about your practice; the section then reads as a definition exercise. Better concepts come from your own specialty and its recurring problem: continuity in a service with high turnover, negotiated adherence in a chronic disease clinic, presence at the end of life, vigilance in critical care, or the transfer of self-care capability in rehabilitation. Define each one, document it from the literature as the brief requires, and say why it is specific to your practice rather than to nursing generally. Specificity also gives your two concepts a literature, since a recurring problem in a named specialty has usually been written about while a universal value has been written about endlessly and unhelpfully. Name the recurring problem your specialty has and build the concept from it.

The propositions are the most technically demanding requirement and the least well understood. A proposition is a statement of relationship between two or more concepts, and it should be assertible — capable of being right or wrong. Nursing is caring is not a proposition; it is a definition. When a patient's capability increases, the nurse's direct activity decreases and the nurse's teaching activity increases is a proposition, because it connects two named concepts in a stated direction. Write at least five, number them as the brief instructs, and use only concepts you have already defined in the paper. That last rule is what makes them synthesis rather than a final list. Numbering them exactly as the brief instructs also makes it obvious to the marker that the requirement was met, which matters when the list is the hardest thing in the paper to write. Check each proposition against the rule that both its concepts appear earlier.

Two practical constraints. The page limit is four to six pages excluding references, and four required sections means the autobiography gets about one page and everything else has to be efficient, so write the propositions and the concepts first and let the introduction shrink to fit. And the brief asks you to give your philosophy a title appropriate to its content and emphasis, which is not decoration: a title such as nursing as restored capability names a position, whereas my personal nursing philosophy names nothing. Choose the title after the propositions are written, since by then you will know what you actually argued. A title that names a position also gives the paper an argument, which four required sections otherwise conspire to prevent. Write the title last, once you know what the propositions committed you to. A philosophy called restored capability or negotiated adherence names something; my personal philosophy names nothing at all.