GNSA Bulletin - July 2022 Edition

 

 

I chose Vanderbilt University School of Nursing (VUSN) because of its world-renowned reputation for health care and health research. I was specifically interested in the Adult Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program because of the advanced training to manage medically complex situations with patients in the acute phase of illness and injury. This is the moment when our patients need a highly skilled and trained, but also a compassionate provider to meet them where they are and provide the science to arrest the disease process. I found that focus is at the heart of the VUSN AGACNP program, with each faculty committed to advancing our profession by ensuring this nursing philosophy is at the center of training new NPs. 

 

The kids are out for the summer, but your scholarly work continues. Writing a manuscript or finishing up dissertation work might be on your to do list for the summer months. When to write and how often to write is always a question. The experts say you must write every day. Now that you’ve got that cleared up, what are your next questions? What should you write about? How should you structure or organize your writing?

For your manuscript, just write whatever comes to mind. What topic has been on your mind and what do you want to learn more about? Has there been a topic where you have searched in the literature and just can’t find many articles about it? That could be a sign that you should look into that topic further. Also, remember to read publications in your area of interest. Articles have a section informing recommendations for research. This should cue you to what’s missing in the literature. 

The same information can apply to your dissertation work, no one knows more about your topic than you do. Start with answering the question about what you want your peers to know about your research topic or why this topic is important to the nursing profession. We all have different passions, tell us what moves you about this work.

Organization, logic, and flow could come after you have a few paragraphs of writing. You might decide to break those paragraphs into different headings or subheadings, and voila! You got some structure to your writing.

The point of it all is to find a strategy that works for you! Ask your colleagues for tips on how they write, collect strategies from books or other writing resources, and then make it your own. 

Here are my key takeaways:

• Free-write and then revise later.
• Keep an orphan document with paragraphs you came up with that might not fit in your work just yet. You may find places to incorporate this writing.
• Don’t be so critical of your work or think it’s just not scholarly enough. You got this!
• Write for as long as you’re inspired. If you have writer’s block then it's time to switch your attention to something else, like taking a walk or finding the perfect journal to send your manuscript draft.