Nursing - Clinical Placements are Particularly Designed

Running head: NURSING
Summative Assessment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1NURSING
Introduction
Clinical placements are particularly designed with the aim of providing nursing students
an opportunity to incorporate their theoretical knowledge in future practice. Not only do such
placements help in building professional identity and knowledge, they also act imperative in
developing or consolidating clinical skills (Keeping-Burke et al. 2020). This assignment will
focus on critically evaluating a qualitative article that explains the factors, which create an
impact on decisions of student nurses for reporting poor practice that is witnessed by them
during their clinical placement. Clinical placement is important in nursing profession, since it
provides a roadmap to professional development and patient care decision. Without appropriate
clinical placement, the nursing students are not able to autonomously function as advocates of
the patient, and demonstrate a failure in contributing to global health initiatives.
Research in nursing helps in developing knowledge about wellbeing and health, and also
emphasizes on promotion of health of patients across their lifespan. Nursing research also
facilitates identification of actions that are in place, for enhancing capability of patients to
effectively respond to potential or actual health problems (Potter et al. 2016). The process of
critical appraisal in nursing practice comprises of systematic and careful evaluation of scholarly
evidences, in order to determine their relevance, value, and trustworthiness, in relation to a
particular phenomenon. Importance of critical appraisal in nursing can be accredited to the fact
that it helps in refuting or supporting claims, with the help of high-quality evidences, and also
assists in identification of excellent quality research that is relevant to nursing practice
(LoBiondo-Wood and Haber 2017). Two key terms that are relevant to this essay are qualitative
research and interview. While qualitative research refers to the procedure of collecting data
through conversational and open ended interaction, interviews are a method of data collection

2NURSING
where information is elicited through open or closed-ended questions, asked by a professional
researcher to a group of respondents.
Believability
The title of the research was ‘Factors influencing student nurse decisions to report poor
practice witnessed while on placement’. It was precise and self-explanatory in nature. The entire
article was written in simple and lucid language that was understandable and clearly helped in
conveying the information shared (Ion et al. 2015). Credibility of the authors can be associated
to the fact that they were affiliated to two renowned universities of the United Kingdom namely,
the Abertay University and Glasgow University. The article was written following the academic
writing style that helped the researchers to present information in a critical and persuasive
manner (Hyland and Jiang 2017). Research abstract refers to brief summary of scholarly
evidences that helps the target audience to rapidly ascertain the purpose of an article (Wulandari
et al. 2018). An abstract also facilitates gaining an overview of the methods that were employed
for conducting a particular investigation, the findings obtained from the research, and the general
implications. In this article the abstract was divided into five sections that were: background,
objective, method, results, and conclusions. Not only did the abstract clearly elucidate the
objective of the researchers, but also identified different themes that emerged from the collected
data, thereby concluding how the findings would help in informing nursing practice.
Robustness
Research problem- Purpose of a research refers to a statement that clearly explains why a
particular investigation has been conducted or the major goal of the research. In this article the
researchers clearly mentioned that their aim was two explain findings obtained from a qualitative

3NURSING
research conducted on a small scale that investigated the factors, which majority of nursing
students take into consideration, when they think about responding to poor care witnessed during
clinical placements (Ion et al. 2015). Relevance of this research purpose can be associated to the
fact that improvement of patient care has been identified as a priority for different healthcare
professionals, with the primary objective of accomplishing excellent degree of patient
satisfaction. Poor patient care has not only been associated with decline in health status of the
patients, but also with a decrease in patient satisfaction. It also directly threatens job satisfaction
of healthcare professionals, and even puts reputation of the healthcare organisation at a stake
(Roberts 2017).
Nursing students, during their clinical placements are expected to closely observe how
their mentors behave and adopt a model of self-behaviour, based on that of their mentors. If there
supervisors or mentors fail to report or raise concerns about poor practice of registered nurses,
the students demonstrate a likelihood of replicating such undesirable behaviour, not only during
their clinical placement but also in future practice (Roberts 2016). This would directly threaten
the patient safety. Therefore, it was necessary to identify the factors that the nursing students
generally consider, while reporting poor care that they observe during their placement.
Literature review- Literature review refers to a summary of following resources like
thesis, journal article, or books that are pertinent to a particular research question or topic that is
currently under investigation. Importance of the literature review can be associated to the fact
that it describes how the current investigation is associated to previous research, with the help of
evidences (Hart 2018). It also demonstrates relevance and originality of the research problem,
while justifying the proposed methodology. The researchers of this article provided an extensive
literature review that was based on both qualitative and quantitative evidences. The literature