Exploring the Literature and Finding Studies - Assignment Example

Exploring the Literature and Finding Studies Exploring the Literature and Finding Studies A literature review is a critical description of the information relevant to a certain field or topic of interest (Jesson and Lacey, 2006; May and Holmes, 2012). The literature review can occur as a standalone paper or as part of a thesis proposal. It can also be included at the beginning of a thesis (Jesson and Lacey, 2006). According to Cleary, Hunt and Horsfall (2009) and Jesson and Lacey (2006), it gives an overview of the fields being researched i.e. what has been discussed about the topic, the key writers, the existing theories and hypotheses, the knowledge gaps or the questions being asked related to theories, and the appropriate methodologies necessary in the investigation of the underlying issues.

An efficient literature review is characterized be wide information searches that are presented in the form of a paraphrased critical analysis (Jesson and Lacey, 2006; May and Holmes, 2012; Cleary, Hunt, and Horsfall, 2009). The two databases that I will use to complete my literature review are Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and PubMed. CINHAL abstracts and indexes numerous nursing, biomedical, allied health and consumer information sources (Kim and Yu, 2011; Cleary, Hunt, and Horsfall, 2009).

The literature is presented in the form of books, dissertations, acts and educational software. PubMed database is operated by National Library of Medicine (NLM), USA. It acts as a source of free archive providing journal literature on biomedical and life sciences (Lu, 2011; States et al., 2009). Standard searches are conducted through entering the key details of the subjects into the search windows (Chang, Heskett and Davidson, 2006). Comprehensive search requires entry of detailed understanding of the subject being researched on and requires the inclusion of more specific information such a names (Chang, Heskett and Davidson, 2006; Lu, 2011).

Comprehensive searches are best conducted by specialists or librarians. The two source studies that I will use for the research critiques are:Greenslade, M., Elliot, B., & Mandville-Anstey, S. (2010). Same-Day Breast Cancer Surgery: A Qualitative Study of Women’s Lived Experiences. Oncology Nursing Forum, 37(2), E92-E97.Raica, D. (2009). Effect of action-oriented communication training on nurses communication self-efficacy. MedSurg Nursing, 18(6), 343.ReferencesChang AA, Heskett KM, Davidson TM (2006).

Searching the literature using medical subject headings versus text word with PubMed. Laryngoscope 116(2): 366–340. Cleary, M., Hunt, G. E., & Horsfall, J. (2009). Conducting efficient literature searches. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 47, 11, 34-41. Jesson, J., & Lacey, L. (2006). How to do (or not to do) a critical literature review. Pharmacy Education, 6(2), 139–148. Retrieved from http://eprints.aston.ac.uk/3431/1/Jesson_and_lacey2006.pdfKim, D., & Yu, H. (2011). Figure text extraction in biomedical literature.

Plos One, 6, 1.Lu, Z. (2011). PubMed and beyond: A survey of web tools for searching biomedical literature. Database 2011: baq036–baq036. May, A. L., & Holmes, S. (2012). Introduction to Nursing Research. London: Taylor & Francis Ltd. States, D. J.; Ade, A. S.; Wright, Z. C.; Bookvich, A. V.; Athey, B. D. (2009). MiSearch adaptive pubMed search tool. Bioinformatics, 25(7): 974–976.