Search Assignment Sample For Ireland Students

For information and reference only – not to be submitted as your own work. Use this extract to see how a nursing research critique is organised and where the judgement sits; then choose your own article, read it closely and write your own appraisal in your own words.

Related brief: see the Research in Practice 1 individual assignment question for the module task wording.

This sample shows how a 1,500-word research critique for a Stage 2 nursing module such as Research in Practice 1 can be built on the Ellis (2019) framework. It appraises one published qualitative paper, Bray and Østergaard (2024), and follows the framework headings in order. The extract is condensed to show method, not to replace the full word count.

Nursing research critique sample at a glance

The table below is the summary a marker can take in within seconds. Each row names the framework question, records what the paper actually reports, and then gives a judgement. Notice that the third column carries the marks.

Title

The title of Bray and Østergaard (2024) states the design, the topic, the participants and the clinical setting, which is what Ellis (2019) expects of a good title. Its weakness is the word “value”. The study explores what students said they valued, not what the course achieved, so the title promises slightly more than a perception study can deliver.

Author credentials

Both authors are affiliated with the Copenhagen Academy for Medical Education and Simulation, which gives them clear subject expertise. That is also the difficulty. The study was carried out at the academy that delivered the course, and the course was funded by the Municipality of Copenhagen’s health and care administration (Bray and Østergaard, 2024). No competing interests were declared, although a reader might reasonably regard the authors’ institutional link to the intervention and the funding as matters worth naming.

The question

The research question is focused and answerable: how nursing students experience simulation-based training adapted for primary care. A qualitative question is justified because the aim is understanding, not measurement. The introduction would be stronger if it showed what earlier work had left unknown, and if it named a conceptual framework, such as a model of experiential learning, to anchor the later interpretation.

Methodology, methods and sampling

Design

The authors used focus groups with inductive thematic analysis. Sandelowski (2000) argues that qualitative description suits studies that want a close, low-inference account of participants’ views, and the same logic supports this choice, so it is defensible. It does mean the findings stay near the surface of what students said, and the paper should not be read as explaining why learning occurred.

Sampling and recruitment

Of 35 sixth-semester students invited, 31 took part, which is a high response. The whole cohort was invited, so there was no purposive selection. That is practical and fair, but it does not seek out dissenting or contrasting experiences. Students who were less engaged, or who attended fewer sessions, may have been less likely to speak in a group.

Data collection

Four focus groups were held immediately after the final course day, each lasting 40 to 58 minutes with around eight students. The interviewers were qualitative researchers who were not course educators, which is a sensible safeguard. However, groups of eight leave limited time per person, and speaking in front of peers straight after a course invites socially desirable answers. Individual interviews, or a follow-up several weeks into placement, would have tested whether the enthusiasm lasted.

Analysis

The team followed inductive thematic analysis in the tradition of Braun and Clarke (2006), transcribed audio with automated software and checked the text manually, and the second author reviewed the analysis process and discussed the findings. The steps are transparent. The weakness is that the reviewing author works at the same academy that delivered the course, so the check shows consistency between two insiders rather than independent confirmation.

Saturation is reported as confirmed at the code and theme stages. Braun and Clarke (2021) caution that saturation is a poor fit for reflexive thematic analysis, since themes are generated by the analyst and not simply found in the data. A critique should therefore ask how saturation was judged and whether the concept suits the chosen analysis.

Results, conclusions and discussion

Seven themes are presented: positive perceptions; educational value (confidence, electronic records, emergency preparedness and independence); adjustments needed for primary care; educators’ competencies; learning needs; placement challenges; and career guidance. Quotations are used to support each, which allows the reader to judge the fit between data and theme.

The weighting is telling. Most of the material is favourable, and the less comfortable themes, such as the limits of low-fidelity equipment, are framed as adjustments and not as failings. Unless the paper shows how negative or deviant cases were handled, the reader cannot tell whether criticism was rare or simply under-reported.

The discussion links the findings to earlier simulation research and to the case for contextualised scenarios, and the conclusions stay close to the data. It could say more about professional standards. For an Irish reader, the relevant benchmark is how the course design compares with the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice (Watts et al., 2021) and with the requirements of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland for registration programmes, neither of which the paper uses.

Ethical issues

Necessity and approval

The research was reported to the Capital Region of Denmark’s scientific ethics committee, which judged formal approval unnecessary under Danish law (Bray and Østergaard, 2024). That is a legitimate legal position, but it is not the same as ethical scrutiny. In many Irish and UK settings a study involving students as participants would go before a research ethics committee, partly because students are in a dependent relationship with the institution.

Consent, coercion and vulnerability

Participation was voluntary and written consent was obtained. Check the methods section for how recruitment was handled and whether students were told of the researchers’ link to the course. Students are a potentially vulnerable group because they may feel unable to refuse staff, even when facilitators do not teach them. Check also whether withdrawal rights are described.

Confidentiality and principles

Quotations are presented without identifying details, which protects anonymity, although focus groups cannot guarantee that peers will keep what was said confidential. Using the four principles of Beauchamp and Childress (2019), beneficence is plausible because participants lost little and the findings may improve training. Non-maleficence is largely met. Autonomy is supported by written consent but may be weakened if role disclosure was unclear. Justice is satisfied by inviting a whole cohort and not a selected few.

Rigour in qualitative research

Lincoln and Guba (1985) frame trustworthiness through credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability, and Ellis (2019) draws on the same ideas.

• Transparency and dependability: the setting, timeline, course structure, group sizes and analytic steps are described clearly enough for another team to follow the process.
• Credibility: a large proportion of the cohort took part and quotations are used, but there is no member checking. Birt et al. (2016) note that returning findings to participants can strengthen credibility, although it is not a cure-all, and its absence here is a gap.
• Confirmability and reflexivity: the authors work at the academy that delivered the course. A reflexivity statement describing how that institutional position was managed would be more convincing.
• Transferability: the single-centre Danish setting, with municipal homecare and nursing homes, limits wider application. Irish programmes could treat the findings as hypotheses to test locally.

Reporting quality can be checked against the COREQ checklist (Tong, Sainsbury and Craig, 2007), which asks specifically about researcher characteristics and relationship with participants, two areas where this paper is thin.

If you are working through your own appraisal and want to see how a marker-ready structure looks for your module, the team behind our nursing assignment support in Ireland can provide guidance and model answers.

Overall judgement

Bray and Østergaard (2024) offer a clearly reported, ethically lawful and practically useful account of how one cohort experienced a primary-care simulation course. Its findings should be treated as credible but cautious: positive, self-reported, gathered by researchers close to the intervention, and unlikely to travel without adaptation. The strongest recommendation for practice is modest: involve students in adjusting scenarios and electronic record training to the primary-care setting.

For a different assignment format, see our report writing services or the wider university assignment help hub, and read our guide on how to critique a qualitative nursing research article before you start.

About the expert

References

Beauchamp, T.L. and Childress, J.F. (2019) Principles of biomedical ethics. 8th edn. New York: Oxford University Press.

Birt, L., Scott, S., Cavers, D., Campbell, C. and Walter, F. (2016) ‘Member checking: a tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation?’, Qualitative Health Research, 26(13), pp. 1802–1811. doi:10.1177/1049732316654870.

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101. doi:10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2021) ‘To saturate or not to saturate? Questioning data saturation as a useful concept for thematic analysis and sample size rationales’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(2), pp. 201–216. doi:10.1080/2159676X.2019.1704846.

Bray, L. and Østergaard, D. (2024) ‘A qualitative study of the value of simulation-based training for nursing students in primary care’, BMC Nursing, 23, article 308. doi:10.1186/s12912-024-01886-0.

Ellis, P. (2019) Evidence-based practice in nursing. 4th edn. London: SAGE.

Lincoln, Y.S. and Guba, E.G. (1985) Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.

Sandelowski, M. (2000) ‘Whatever happened to qualitative description?’, Research in Nursing and Health, 23(4), pp. 334–340.

Tong, A., Sainsbury, P. and Craig, J. (2007) ‘Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ): a 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups’, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 19(6), pp. 349–357. doi:10.1093/intqhc/mzm042.

Watts, P.I. et al. (2021) ‘Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice: simulation design’, Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 58, pp. 14–21.