Detailed Requirements for Application Paper

The following provides you with a detailed explanation of the requirements for the paper.
Consider this to be a recipe for success in the writing of your paper. I encourage you
to print the details included below and follow them carefully as you construct your
paper.
Step 1
You will need to select one concept from the 11 concepts that are covered in the
course.

Powerlessness and Empowerment or Hardiness and Resilience

Workplace Violence

Spirituality

Diversity

Attachment

Therapeutic Relationships

Family Violence and Interpersonal Violence

Caregiver Burden

Chronic Illness: Stigma or Chronic illness: Coping or Chronic illness: Hope

[stigma; coping and hope are all concepts only select one as your concept]

Grief

Caring for Self

You may be asking yourself, how you know what concept that you want to write about. I
encourage you to peruse through the modules quickly and look at the content that has
been provided in association with the concept. As well, you may wish to look at a few of
the readings.
In consideration of your choice of concept, I encourage you think about what one
clinical situation you will be presenting/ exploring/ discussing in your paper and if that
concept is not relevant to the clinical situation you may need to either:

consider exploring and presenting a different clinical situation.

or

consider exploring another course concept that is relevant to the clinical

situation.
If you are thinking about doing the topic of: Powerlessness, empowerment, hardiness
and resilience for your paper, you should focus on either:

powerlessness/ empowerment
or

hardiness/ resilience
in your paper given the restrictive page limits of the paper it would be impossible to
explore all of the above 4 topics.

Step 2 - Description of Clinical Situation

Write a description of the clinical situation that you are going to present in the paper.
This description should not be more than one page in length.
Within this description you should provide an overview of the situation so that the reader
has a brief but clear understanding of what occurred in the situation. Once you have
completed this, reflect on what you have written and make sure that your description
includes the three issues that you are planning to talk about in the Identification,
Discussion and Analysis section of the paper so that the reader (the person grading
your paper) can clearly see that they existed in the situation.
For example, if my paper was about the concept of Body image (note: this is not a
concept being covered this year in this course- I am just using it as an explanation)
three issues that might be part of the clinical situation may be: 1) stigma; 2) a sense of
powerlessness; and 3) decreased self-esteem and self-concept. It would important in
the clinical description that the content reflect their presence within the context of the
clinical situation.
It is important to remember that sometimes a concept can become an issue in another
concept. For example, stigma may be an issue in the concept in self-care as
powerlessness may be an issue in chronic illness.
It is important that the 3 issues of the concept you are exploring are presented in the
paper within the clinical situation you are discussing.
Remember: this is an application paper, you will be exploring the 3 issues of the one
concept through how these issues presented in the 1 clinical situation, not how they are
present in general within society, or in multiple clients or nurses in general or within the
unit or organization. The focus of your discussion of these issues should be within the
context of the one client in one clinical situation in your paper.
Please note that a definition of clinical situation for this paper is as follows:

The events of one client during one specific time frame. This
means that you will be talking about one persons experiences
during one episode/ event of his/ her life.
A clinical situation cannot be that of a unit, an organization,
nursing profession in general, a group of nurses or clients.
Should you have any questions about your clinical situation
please seek clarification from your instructor.

If you have chosen any of the following concepts: workplace violence or self-care
- you may be the person that you describe in the clinical situation. What I mean is that
you may be the client. For example:
You may have experienced an event where you were a victim of horizontal violence, or
you wish to talk about an event that impacted on a need for you to engage in self-care
(e.g. burnout). With each of these events, you are part of the clinical situation and you
would then explore these through your experiences.
There are a few clinical situations that I have received in some papers in the past that
were not acceptable clinical situations and thus this was reflected in the students
grades. These include but are not limited to:

Presenting the clinical situation as being: a unit at work, a hospital, a country.

Presenting multiple clients/ multiple clinical situations as being the clinical

situation.

Identifying yourself as the client in any of the topics not identified as being
acceptable to do so.

Identifying your own family member/ friend as the client in a clinical situation.

Remember that this is an application paper, that you are exploring the concept through
the lens of your experience as a nurse and your interactions with a client.
This section should not be longer than one page in length.
Step 3 - Relevance of Topic/ Situation to You Personally and Professionally
This step is reflective in nature. Within this section of the paper, I am asking you to
reflect on and identify why you chose this concept and/or clinical situation to talk about.

There must have been was something that stood out above other concepts/
experiences that you have had during your professional life and I am interested in
hearing about this and the impact this had on you both professionally and personally.

I am interested in hearing about the professional relevance that this concept/

clinical experience has had for you, what impact the situation may have had on
you professionally.

I am also interested in hearing how the situation impacted on you as a person.

This section in your paper should be no longer than page in length.

Step 4 - Review the Literature

You have identified your concept, and the 3 issues of the one concept that you will be
exploring, discussing and analyzing in the clinical situation.
It is at this point I recommend that you carry out a review of the literature. Please do
not use the words I carried out research on the topic in your paper, this is not a correct
statement to make or to include in your paper. You could say I have reviewed the
available literature on the topic.
I suggest that you gather the articles that are relevant to the one concept and each of
the 3 issues and make 3 piles: one pile of articles for each of the issues. As you go
through each article in each pile take 3 coloured highlighters and the content that is
relevant to issue 1, highlight in pink; the content that is relevant to issue 2, highlight in
blue and the content that is relevant to issue 3, highlight in yellow. Once you have done
this you will have easy access to content that you have colour-coded that has been
identified as being relevant to each of your 3 issues.
All of the articles that you use/ include in your paper should be within 5 published
years unless they are seminal and then they can be older.

Step 5 - Identification, Discussion and Analysis of the Three Issues

During this step you will do the following:

With each of the issues, describe the issue as it presented in the clinical situation
- use bullets to lay this out in your draft (later to be turned into sentences and
paragraphs). This should be one- 1.5 pages in length for each issue. I encourage
students to put each description on a separate page as you are creating your
paper as this will help your organize not only your thoughts but as well the
content to be included in the paper.

Once you have a description of each of the issues, on separate pages, go back
to the content you have previously highlighted in your articles and include each of
the relevant sections into your working draft copy of your description of the issue
as is appropriate. For example: if content A in article 1 is relevant for the third
bullet in issue 1, include this content after that bullet. Once you have in putted all
of the content from each of the articles into your draft pages, turn these bullets
into sentences and paragraphs. It is important throughout this process that you
always include the sources for the content from the articles and also indicate with
quotation marks content that is "word for word" from the articles.

With each piece of theory/ content (from the article) that you have chosen to
include in the discussion and analysis of each of the issues, ensure that you link
it back/ discuss the content within the context of the issue in your specific
clinical situation. A good way to check/ ensure that you do this/ have done this is
to make sure that you have stated what the relevance or association that each
piece of content from articles has with the client/ nurse in the clinical situation.
For example: Smith and Smith (2009) identified that caregiver stress can cause a
caregiver to have feelings of burnout. Mr. B (client in clinical situation)
experienced signs and symptoms of burnout during his provisions of care
giving for his wife as he stated that he felt....

Remember, it is important that the content that you include be relevant to the
issue as it has been presented in the clinical situation. For example, if the issue
in your clinical situation is about a 9 year-old who is experiencing stigma from
friends it would not be appropriate to include content that discusses stigma that
older adults experience from their friends.

Each of the 3 issues (within the clinical situation) should be identified, presented and
discussed and analyzed. During the analysis process, the content from relevant articles
(8 different sources- all of these must be from articles published within 5 years) should
be integrated into the analysis - to provide you and the reader with greater
understanding of the issue within the situation. For example, you might want to talk
about how a specific excerpt of content from an article increases your understanding/
interpretation of issues/ aspects of clinical situation.
The theoretical content must be clearly related/ linked back to the situation you are
discussing. For example, if you are talking about an issue of family support and yet the
theory you are presenting is talking about support from distant friends, although this
theory may be interesting and informative, it is not relevant to the issue and should not
be included. The reader of your paper (instructor) will be looking to see that the content
you have included from the articles is relevant to the client/ nurse in the clinical
situation.
I always encourage students to look back at what theory (content) they have included
and to ensure that it is relevant for the issues being discussed and if it has nothing to do

with and does not support his/her analysis and discussion of that issue, remove it and
look for more relevant theory that is specific to what he/ she wants to discuss.
Please note that a paper with direct quotes versus indirect quotes does not demonstrate
the same level of critical thinking or scholarly nature/ ability, or understanding of the
content from the articles and thus, this is reflected in the grading of the paper. A paper
that contains primarily direct quotes versus indirect quotes will receive a lower mark
than a similarly written paper with all indirect quotes.
During my time as an undergraduate student, in this course, I received a D grade on my
paper for this course. Being the concerned student I was I approached the teacher and
asked why this happened what could I / should have done differently? She gave me a
yellow highlighter and asked me to highlight all of my direct quotes. Needless to say, I
ran out of ink and she gave me yet another highlighter to continue with this process. I
will never forget what she said to me. I was a good consumer of the literature however
my level of understanding and critical thinking was not demonstrated in my providing so
many direct quotes. She then made me go through the exercise of changing the
direct quotes into indirect quotes. At which point I began to see the differences in the
two papers. After that experience I found myself reviewing my papers for reviewing the
presence of direct quotes, prior to submitting the paper.and as a result.... my grades
improved significantly after this course. Are you wondering if this is a true story? It is
and it is my story.
Avoid back-to-back quotes/ cut and paste. This identifies that you are a good
consumer of the literature but does not indicate your knowledge and understanding of
the content. Also if there are back-to-back quotes present you have not demonstrated
that you have linked back/ discussed the theory/ content from the articles within the
context of the issue in the situation. An unfortunate error to make with this paper, and
one I would not recommend, is to start your identification, discussion and analysis of
each of the issue with providing a theoretical discussion of the issue (what the literature
says about the issue. This is not part of the criteria for the paper. With each of the
issues start your discussion with how this issue presented in the situation and integrate
the content from the articles in throughout this discussion. This is why using the strategy
of bullets (see bullets at top of step 5) as described above will be helpful
I encourage you to go back and ensure that you link each piece of theory (discuss it
within the context of the issue) as you present in the paper to show the relevance/ your
understanding. To avoid the mistake of presenting back-to-back quotes, after you have
written your paper, print a copy and highlight all your quotes and see if you have an
excessive amount of continuous colouring on any given page. If you do have this, you
still have some work to do...your paper needs further attention
This section should be between minimum of 6 pages maximum of 9 pages in
length. Each issue should be a minimum of 2 pages in length and no more than 3
pages in length. Each issue cannot be properly or fully discussed and analyzed with
the required depth and breadth in less than 2 pages.
Consider the following as this may help you in writing your papers:

A student A submits 1 page of content for an issue in her/his paper versus a student B
who submits 3 pages of content for an issue- which of these would have more
discussion, analysis and depth? As a result which of these would more likely to receive
a higher grade in keeping with expectations of this section? Answer: Student B.
I encourage you to ensure that for each issue that you provide 3 pages of discussion
and analysis as remember this section is worth 60% of the grade for the paper. As well I
encourage you to speak with your instructor to ensure that you are on track with the
expectations for this section and with the expectations for the paper in general.
Step 6 - Discussion/ Analysis of How Your Future Practice May be influenced
In this section you will discuss how your analysis of the clinical situation and the content
that you have presented in the paper may influence your future nursing practice.
You are expected to include excerpts from the analysis and discussion of each issues
(e.g. content from literature, analysis) to provide depth and breadth in your discussion of
the impact that the contents in this paper may have on future practice.
This section should be 1- 1.5 pages in length.
In this section you should include a balance of content from the literature and as well as
content from your analysis of the issues. In this section I would be looking for you
articulating how YOUR OWN practice (not nurses in general only you) will be/ may be
influenced affected by the contents in your paper. For example how might the contents
influence your interactions with similar future patients; how might the contents impact
your response to similar situations (e.g. horizontal violence). I would be looking for how
your practice might evolve, move forward
Consider the following: A student A submits 3/4 page of content in this section versus a
student B who submits 1.5 pages of content for this section. As a result which of these
would more likely to receive a higher grade in keeping with expectations of this section?
Answer: Student B.

Step 7 - Conclusion or Summary

In this section you need to first make the decision to write either a:

conclusion in your paper

or

summary in your paper.

Your decision should be reflected in the heading you use. So if you are choosing to write
a summary the heading used should be: Summary and if you are writing a conclusion
then the heading should be: Conclusion.
The two are very distinct.

A summary provides the reader with an overview of some of the key elements in
the paper.

A conclusion is an afterthought, sometimes reflective in nature providing the

reader with insight to your final aha of the paper.
Both are considered acceptable and receive the same weight in the grading process.
This section should be about page in length.
Step 8 - Introduction
You may be thinking/ asking, why I have suggested that you wait to write the
introduction until after you have written the paper? The reason for this is that your
introduction should provide an overview of what will be in the paper and what the reader
has to look forward to. Some would say you really cannot fully say what will be in your
paper until you have written it.
Your introduction should include the following. Identify:

the concept that you will be presenting

the 3 issues of the concept that you will be exploring

what else the reader will have to look forward to reading in the paper in a
sequential order.
For example, I have provided you with an example of the start of a clear and concise
introduction below.
Within this paper I will explore the concept of body image and the following 3 issues of
stigma, powerlessness and ineffective communication. In my paper I will also provide a
clinical situation..........
The introduction should be a paragraph in length, no more then 1/2 page in length.
Consider the following: this section should not be more than page of content, I am not
looking for you to include content from the literature in this section, there are specific
expectations of what should be included and anything that is included outside of the
expectations for this section (e.g. content from literature) will not be graded as I can only
grade as per expectations in each section so this content may be interesting and
informative however will not affect your score in this section.
Step 9 - Headings
The following headings should be present in the paper that you submit. I have formatted
the headings for you in APA format. You are required to use these headings. I have also
included the headings in the course materials link as well.

Introduction
Description of Clinical Situation
Discussion of Relevance of Clinical Situation/ Topic to
Student Both Personally & Professionally
Identification, Discussion, and Analysis of 3 Issues of the
Concept Within the Clinical Situation
Issue 1: Put The Name of the Issue Here
Issue 2: Put the Name of the Issue Here
Issue 3: Put the Name of the Issue Here
Discussion/ Analysis of How My Future Practice May be
Influenced
Conclusion/ Summary

Some Additional Considerations for the Paper

Keep the grading sheet near you as you complete your paper and before you submit
your paper go through it to ensure you have met each of the criteria as this is the basis
upon which your paper will be graded.
The contents in each section can only be graded based on the expectations in each
section so ensure that you have met all of the expectations.
Prior to your submitting your paper to Turnitin, review your paper using the "Student
Self-feedback Sheet" that has been provided in the course materials link. If during your
review you check off somewhat or no in any section please ensure you go back to
this section in your paper and make any additions/ changes that may need to be made
so that you can check of "yes" box. If you have a somewhat or no in a section this
means that this section is fully completed and the paper is not ready for submitting. I
encourage you to take the time, go through each section and check of the contents on
the student self-feedback sheet. I have had students who have said to me that they felt
that their paper was very much influenced by this exercise and had they not done this
process they never would have gotten as a good grade as they did in the paper (yes,
papers do receive A grades in this course).
The length of the paper is 10-12 pages excluding the title and reference pages.
Consider the following: Student A submits a paper that is 10 pages in length and
margins are not 1 inch have increased these to 1.5 inches. Student B submits a paper
that is 12 pages and all margins are 1 inch as per formatting expectations of APA.

Which student is more likely to provide increased content, discussion analysis and as a
result have a greater likelihood of meeting all the expectations for the paper and thus
get a higher grade? Answer Student B.
There is an expectation that all direct and paraphrasing/ indirect quotes included in the
body of the paper must have sources cited in: 1) the body of the paper; and 2) in the
reference page.

Direct quotes: will have quotation marks around author(s) words and will cite
provide the author(s) last name(s), year of publication of article and page number
in brackets, as identified in the APA manual. For example, these are the direct
words (Smith & Smith, 2009, p.4).

Indirect quotes/ paraphrasing: will cite the author(s) last name(s) and year of
publication of the article in brackets as identified in the APA manual. For
example, (Smith & Smith, 2009).

It is not acceptable to include any content that has been previously submitted in part/ in
total by you/ someone else for another academic assignment in this course/ another
course. You cannot include any contents (including clinical events) that have been
submitted in any previous papers/ assignments/ reflections for any other course. This is
considered academic misconduct
It is not acceptable to state/ assume that content is general knowledge/ one's own
experience and thus it does not need to be sourced - if it has been learned it is not
general knowledge as it has been acquired from a published source. If the content is
personal opinions, these need to be clearly stated as being personal opinions as they
appear in the paper.

Reference list: Consider the following: Student A all of the references are APA formatted
and have met the expectations for paper all references are articles that have been
published within 5 years. Student B all of his/her references are not APA formatted and
not all the articles cited in reference list are within 5 years. Which student is more likely
to get a higher score in the formatting section of the paper? Answer student B.

I hope the above is helpful in developing your papers. The above contents have been
provided in support of your writing your paper.
Best regards diane