CRITICAL R

*** VERY IMPORTANT STEPS TO FOLLOW IN DOING THIS ASSIGNMENT 3****

******Important _ Assignment 3 tips

Change of topic, setting, or population – It is ok if you decide to revise your topic (poor practice), considering the feedback you received from markers/facilitators/other peers. This will help you to polish/adjust the wording. In general, the topic of poor practice needs to be clear, succinct, and at the same time, informative. If you do change your setting or poor practice, please make sure that they are both sufficiently introduced at the beginning of the report so the reader understands the context of the remainder of the report.

Describing the poor practice - make sure you clearly define and describe what poor practice is. Refrain from using scientific jargon or field-specific words that a reader who is not in your field will not understand. If you received good feedback for this section in assignment 1 please feel free to copy and paste information from this section into assignment 2. If you received feedback on how to improve this section please attend to the feedback and improve for assignment 3. The markers will be checked to see if improvements are made across assignments which should increase your grade.

In general, when you choose a poor practice, it should be considered as a bad practice and how it can be improved, also it should not be an error (which is un-intentional).

PICO for assignment 3 (This can be only 1-2 sentences) – PICO/PIO – I suggest to frame your research question into PICO/PIO, as it helps with your searching strategy as you break down the keywords. Please look at weeks 1 and 2 on PERCI content – there are some detailed examples of how to structure your research question. Your structured research question for assignment 3 may or may not be different from assignment one. As you know in assignment 3, you will provide solutions for improving the poor practice, so, you may want to focus on a specific intervention that is working. I am more than happy to provide feedback if you want to share your PICO with me. Also, please be advised that PICO can be defined differently for quantitative versus qualitative studies. Quantitative PICO: P: population; I: Intervention: C: comparison; and O: outcome. You can remove C if not applicable. PICO for qualitative studies includes P: Population; I: the phenomenon of Interest; CO: context and setting (e.g., health, social, or community care settings). The provision of PICO will help to have a more precise keyword for searching.

Research question – To highlight again, the topic/research question can be general or specific, and from different settings, such as health, social, and community care settings -  as far as it discusses a poor practice. Structure your research question in a succinct, clear, and informative way.

Breaking down the research question based on PICO or PIO – Please break down your research question into PICO/PIO, as it helps to be clearer around the components of your research, and also assists in your searching strategy. PICO/PIO is mainly about the specific population you are referring to, specific intervention or phenomenon of interest, and the health outcomes…  Please be advised that you do NOT need to necessarily have a comparison group, if not applicable.

Ensure you use  evidence-based practice in your critical argument of how to improve the poor practice and/or provide alternatives. This means using information from peer-reviewed journal articles to back up all statements made about resolving the poor practice. The evidence-based practice should focus on (i) patient values, (ii) professional expertise, and (iii) peer-reviewed, evidence-based research. Please do not use “.com websites” as a citation as they are commercial websites that could contain biased information you can use “.gov” and “.edu” if you need to, beyond the three minimum peer-reviewed references.

Primary versus secondary evidence – you can include both primary and secondary evidence for resolving the poor practice. I recommend you to search for secondary papers in your area such as systematic reviews, and particular meta-analyses, as they are on the top of the hierarchy of evidence, and provide you with the most reliable information for resolving the poor practice.

Quantitative versus qualitative evidence to support the poor practice – you can use a combination of quantitative and qualitative studies to provide a comprehensive solution for the poor practice. Quantitative studies provide the significance between variables (e.g., cognitive therapy intervention improves depression), while qualitative studies indicate  the reasons for the correlations/cause and effects (e.g., why/how cognitive therapy improves depression?)

How to explain the three dimensions of evidence-based practice? As the current study is mainly focusing on peer-reviewed, evidence-based research, it is normal to provide most of the information around this dimension of evidence-based practice. However, please make sure to provide some argument also on patient's values, and professional expertise. Overall, often the peer-reviewed, evidence-based research you find may contain a good amount of information also on the other two dimensions (patient's values, and professional expertise). 

Interconnectedness across dimensions of the Evidence-Based Practice – please try to connect the dots including (i) patient values, (ii) professional expertise, and (iii) peer-reviewed, evidence-based research, and show how these together ultimately improve the service provision across different settings. For example: if evidence-based research shows that healthcare professionals require training on a specific topic, you can argue how this suggestion from recent research can improve the professional expertise and hence, the patients’ health. Always remember that Evidence-Based Practice is like a table with three legs, if one breaks, then the table would not work!

Examples of peer-reviewed, evidence-based research --> the most evidence-based research on the poor practice you identified and how to improve it. For example, this can be a diverse range of interventions from training to treatment interventions.

Examples of patient values --> socio-demographic factors, such as social and cultural factors, the inclusion of family members in the care provision, and the decision-making process (besides patinets). I highly recommend considering patients and family members as a unit of care that is not separated. So, their concerns are interconnected.

Examples of professional expertise --> experiences and expertise of healthcare, social, and community care professionals in various topics related to your area (this can be mental health, chronic diseases, leadership styles, etc.) – you may do not require to provide citations for this section, as this is based on your experiences. However, if you find information on the experiences of professionals in the literature discussing a specific topic, please provide citations.

Searching strategy - To achieve a supporting argument for resolving the poor practice, a suitable searching strategy is required (that provides you with a manageable number of relevant papers). If you would like to consider a specific population and/or a specific geographical location in your research, you need to use the relevant key terms in your searching strategy (e.g., mental health, AND young adults, AND Australia) to find the right supporting papers. Make sure the keywords/expressions you choose for searching are the right ones in your discipline. Databases provide the most common keywords (e.g. MESH terms) – remember, the right keywords, result in finding the right papers. Also, please organise a consultation session with librarians if you require. 

Ensure that you use at least 3 peer-reviewed journal articles in your argument and that they are current and not outdated (within the last 5-10 years) – Please be advised that if applicable, you can use the references from assignments one and two rather than searching for new papers.

Assignment examples – Please be advised the assignment examples provided are not ideal, just consider the examples as some ideas of how to conceptualise your work.

Use the APA 7th style/format for your assignment.  Please use the APA template provided for you in the assessment folder.