Nursing

A literature review is an in-depth critical analysis of published scholarly research related to a specific topic. A solid literature review must:

• Be organized around & relate directly to your research question 
• Synthesize results into a summary what is known, or not known on the topic
• Identify common themes that emerge from the literature
• Identify areas of controversy in the literature
• Formulate questions that need further research

Adapted from: Literature Review - A Self-Guided Tutorial, created by Kathleen Hanna, with contributions from Sara Lowe and Ted Polley. Lcensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Always look to your assignment guidelines and rubric. Literature reviews serve a variety of purposes, and assignments can look very different.

1. Define your topic or question. 

2. Develop and document your search strategy. 

• Select the databases you will be searching (CINAHL, PubMED, PsycINFO) 
• Identify keywords and subject headings to use in your search
• Craft your database search using OR / AND
• Document: Keep notes on databases & keywords used, search strategy, and result count (#)

3. Select and evaluate:

• Identify quality research articles that answer aspects of your question / topic
• You may wish to use a critical appraisal checklist to help with assessing quality and generalizability
• Read articles closely, looking for common themes. You may wish to use an article synthesis matrix

4. Writing your literature review:

• Summarize the articles and synthesize findings on common themes Identify any gaps, controversies, etc.
• Be sure to include a clear introduction or background and conclusion / summary to your review. Check assignment guidelines.
• Follow APA style for an APA paper, with in-text citations throughout, and a references listed at the end. See https://libguides.macewan.ca/APA