Nursing Research

If you read journal articles like a book, from start to finish while using all of your brain power, you will be overwhelmed and experience burnout. Instead:

• Start with the abstract—not only to get a summary, but also to find out if the article is relevant and worth your time.
• Jump to the conclusion—figure out what the authors found out first, then you can go back to see how they got there.
• You likely do not need to fully comprehend the methods—this details "how the sausage was made" and can easily overwhelm undergraduate students, so more often than not, skim at best and read the captions of graphs.
  • However, keep in mind that this is the section where you would most likely be able to identify if there is bias not accounted for by the authors.
  • If you attend graduate school, or if you end up co-authoring articles and taking part in original research, you will need to fully comprehend method sections.

• Abstract — Summary of the article.
• Introduction — Overview of the topic, why it matters, the authors' motivation.
• Literature Review — Tell us what other researchers have done, leading us to what gaps are being filled in by this research.
• Method — Details how the research was carried out.
• Results — What outcome or answers were gained from the research.
• Discussion — Why the results are of note, limitations of the research, unintended bias accounted for.
• Conclusion — Discusses possible future directions of research.
• References — List of all the literature used and cited.