Purpose of a Literature Review in Nursing: Types of Literature to Include

Purpose of a Literature Review

1. Enable the student to develop skills to search, read, interpret and summarize the literature on a particular subject.
2. Enable the student to select a topic; the focus of the topic should be related to a nursing/midwifery issue.
3. Determine what is known and not known about a subject, concept or problem in the area of nursing/midwifery
4. Determine gaps, consistencies and inconsistencies in the literature about a subject, concept or problem.
5. Describe the strengths and weaknesses of designs, methods of inquiry and instruments used in earlier works.
6. Discover conceptual traditions used to examine problems.
7. Generate useful research questions/projects/activities for the discipline.
8. Determine an appropriate research design to answer the research question.
9. Determine the need for replication of a well-designed study or refinement of a study.
10. Promote development of protocols and policies related to nursing practice.
11. Identify a new practice intervention, or provide evidence for changing a practice intervention.
12. Enable the student to develop a research question and/or provide discussion on the relevance of the literature review findings to nursing/midwifery practice in a UK context.

Your literature review must focus on a Nursing issue or have a Nursing focus.

• Pick an area that is of interest to you.
• Play around with an idea, rephrase it and try to focus your thoughts into a more specific review question.
• Identify key words that can be used for the literature search.
• The topic should be sufficiently complex to merit rigorous enquiry but narrow enough to yield clear guidelines for practice. Step 2 Planning a Time Scale
• The time taken should not be underestimated.
• Include commitments not connected with work, other study demands and domestic responsibilities.
• Plan a proposed timetable.
• The time scale should be realistic and achievable, making allowances for delays such as, difficulty locating important references. Step 3 Literature Search
• Having defined your question and narrowed down the area of interest, head to the library.
• It is of benefit to have narrowed down your area at this stage to minimise the amount of information to sort through.
• Identify the scope of the literature search in terms of the dates of publication and countries of origin.

Types of Literature to Include

• Research studies are central to a literature review and should be critiqued appropriately.
• The subject may also appear in the literature as debate or description and the reviewer must make an informed judgement about what to include.
• A review should reflect and comment upon the type of literature available i.e. anecdotal / empirical.
• Include literature from other disciplines if appropriate