Identifying an area of your professional practice that is of interest to you and stimulates your desire to learn is a good place to start: Advanced Healthcare Practice Research Paper, UOL, Ireland

Learning outcomes

• Critically analyze the findings from a systematized literature review to
  demonstrate impact and relevance to practice.
• Critically evaluate research methodologies and develop a critical understanding and application of research in practice

The first steps for you

Identifying an area of your professional practice that is of interest to you and stimulates your desire to learn is a good place to start. This module will require you to spend lots of time reading and understanding one topic – so it is vital that you find it interesting and stimulating.

TASK

You are required to consider an area from practice- that you wish to find out more about: you undertake a critical literature review. Undertaking a database search: you find no more than 10 research papers (empirical research) and a minimum of 6. You will have developed a research question (RQ) to find the papers. You then demonstrate your understanding of the process of finding, sorting, and choosing the papers. You demonstrate your understanding of the method/ methodologies of the papers. You develop themes from the papers that relate back to your research question. To structure the assessment, you follow the assessment matrix. As this is level 7, you are demonstrating critical analysis and appraisal.

The Literature Review:

As you advance through the module you will learn how to formulate and refine
a specific question to guide your literature review. Writing a good research question (RQ) is an iterative process, it takes many attempts, so it is important- do not to use the first RQ you write. You will be facilitated to learn how to undertake a structured search of the existing literature, through databases and select the appropriate papers to help you address your specific research question.

The next step will be to gain a good understanding of the current state of
knowledge in relation to the research question underpinning the literature search and review. This will be achieved through critically reviewing each of the selected studies’ methodological approaches and findings, and synthesizing these to answer/address the stated research question.

You are advised to synthesize the findings from the body of research by using
a ‘thematic approach’. Having completed the methodological and thematic reviews you will be in a position to make judgments/interpretations regarding the implications of the evidence to your own area of professional practice.
Your work should be supported by a wide range of relevant reading that you
will demonstrate using Harvard referencing. You are advised to read and use the University of Wolverhampton library resources.