 Hi everyone and welcome back to another vlog. If you don't know who I am, my name is Claire Carmichael and I am a final year adolescent student. I literally have six weeks left about to submit my dissertation, which made me realise this is a perfect time to do a video all about dissertations, tips, advice, help, anything to get you through this. Hopefully I'm going to be able to help and put your mind at rest on dissertations and hopefully give you some advice and tips to help you get through it and hopefully smash it. Firstly I just wanted to say that dissertation was something that I really panicked about, something that I've always panicked about so much so that it almost made me not come into do a degree because I was so paranoid and worried and anxious about the dissertation and how I'm going to manage to write so well and academically and all of this and all these fears have been going around my head for a long time and in second year I actually started to research into my topic ready for my dissertation because I was really worried about it and I wanted to be prepared as much as I can so I can fully fully understand your anxieties and worries right now I promise you but you know what I've just got through it I've just done it and it was alright I'm alive and well I'm smiling at the end of it because I know it's done but the process of doing it it is hard it is long-winded you will tell your hair out it will it might drain your soul a little bit but overall it's okay it's not too bad it's just for me personally it was because I'm so organised I like to get an assignment write my assignment done dusted but this is something that you physically I can't have my hats off to you if you can do this but I physically can't sit down and write a whole dissertation in a night or even a week this has taken me the whole year this is not something that just you can just sit and write I'm sorry if you're that person that can do that hats off to you please give me help tips and advice and leave comments below for other people because I have no idea how you do it also I just wanted to put in a little disclaimer here I can only speak about my own experiences my own thoughts my own opinions also each university will have their own ways of doing things as well so always follow yourself and your university's guidelines before taking advice from anybody else so our dissertation was dissertation slash not called dissertation ours was called acpe and ours was four thousand words we had to come up with our own research question using a peo or a pico then once we found our literature we had to use a cast tool which critically appraises each article to show the strengths and weaknesses of every single article so we had to do 10 of those for each article and then once we found all the strengths and weaknesses we put all of that into a data extraction table and then once we've done this data extraction table we come up with a theming table and then once we've done our theming table and we found recurrent themes within all of the articles that sort of correspond to the answer of the question then we go into our results section and conclusions and things like that so that's overall what we do that's a really whistle stop tour of what we actually do for our acpe assignment and so what I discovered was four thousand words was wasn't enough wasn't not enough so I've used tables I've used appendices things like that to sort of help me out a little bit it's been tough to narrow it all down because everything I'm writing needs to be in there so that's been my toughest challenge with this so far but here are my top tips for you starting your dissertation and I'm going to make it a broad top tips so that whatever you're doing your dissertation on however you're doing your dissertation it's just going to be my tips that are going to help you hopefully whatever way you're doing this my first tip is always my tip for everything be organised look at this as early as possible it is never too soon to start looking at your dissertation like I said I started mine in second year I started researching around the topic and thinking about possible questions for my topic and then I looked at research papers it took me months months and months to find my 10 arse calls took me a long time and this is the main bulk of your whole assignment is finding the research out there so if you could get a head start and do that first before anything so if you've got some time off over the summer over Christmas I know we all want to be out there having fun making the most of our time off but if you get a head start now it's going to save you a lot a lot of work in third year I promise you it's the best tip I can ever give which is why it's number one my next thing I'm going to say is not a tip it's more advice because this is a question that I asked at the very start it's also a question that I've been asked by other students as well and the question is well how when you're looking at your research articles how do you know if it's good enough or not to use in your dissertation this is what you're trying to assess so I know our dissertation was all about the main thing they want you to know is how to do research the whole point of dissertation is so that you know how to go and find a good quality piece of research that backs up what you're doing out there in nursing practice so this is your job doing your dissertation is working out is this article good enough or not and this is where the use of your cast tool comes in so if you have got an article that isn't very good quality you've done your cast tool that you've found a lot of weaknesses with it that's great because that's really really critical you are going to be able to critically analyse that amazingly in your results section that's going to give you some massive brownie points so don't worry about it being strong or weak article or research paper or trial whatever it is as long as you can explain it critique it and all of that you're going to be well away and you're going to have those really strong articles that you found as well that's going to balance it and make it sound juicy hopefully fingers crossed tip number two if you're really really struggling for articles you can't find anything go to your local library go to your university library your personal development department get them to help you search as well not only this but they can actually gain access to articles that you might not have access to so they can put in requests for articles for you do that I've done this and it's really really helped me because it found my last tenth article so that really helped me but please make use of the services at university because that's what they're therefore they're free to use use them they're amazing they're knowledgeable and it'll just open a whole new world to you and hopefully you'll be able to find your articles a lot faster my third tip is make sure you want to write about something you're really passionate about you're going to be spending so long on this dissertation like I said it is going to drain your soul so you want it to be something really interesting something juicy something that you really want to look into something that gets you excited so think about what you've done so far in your nursing career or experienced out there as a healthcare assistant anything like that look at what you're really interested in what you want to know more about things that you can relate to practice anything or anything actually that's going to help in your job role so look at where you want to work as well as a job so you want to be doing maybe your dissertation on something GP related or cardiac related if you want to work on a cardiology world you want to do something about COPD or lung cancer or respiratory problems you want to work on a respiratory ward you get madrift so if you're really interested in working in a particular area and that really fascinates you do your dissertation on that because that's going to view massive massive brownie points when you go to your interview for your job and say actually I'm that interested in this area I've done my dissertation on it that's going to just blow their mind I think so not only one pick something that's going to be really interesting because you will enjoy writing it and researching it and doing it two is going to help you in your job if you pick something that relates to the job that you want to go into or the specialty you want to go into that's going to be massive brownie points for you and yeah hopefully that helps my next tip is break it down into small manageable sections because this is a lot of work it's massive and if you just break it down into manageable bite-sized steps it's going to be so much easier honestly this is what I've done I've done this for the whole year I've just done all these sections bit by bit stage by stage and now I'm coming to the end I'm looking at it thinking oh I've actually done that I've done that I've actually not got as much as I thought that I had to do because I've been doing it as I've been going it's been amazing and also set myself goals with it as well so for the past week I wanted my final draft completed it wasn't completed I still had a conclusion to write I still had to finish off my implementation of findings at the end and I still had a load of references to find so I'm really panicking I'm not gonna lie I was panicking I wanted to get it done so I really really was really disciplined in myself and this week I dedicated two hours some nights three hours every single night for this whole week I've spent on this dissertation just going over and over and over again those bits done chipping away at it all week and then come Saturday I opened my laptop I went over it and thought oh my god I've got all this to do still and I looked at it it's like oh actually I've actually done it all so I looked at it Saturday I was like I think I'm finished I think I've finished my final draft all I need to do now is read through it and that's it it's done beautiful smitten yes so it really really does help to go step by step bit by bit manageable chunks and you will get there you'll look back at it and go wow I'm finished and it'll be the best feeling in the world I promise you and what really helps is having a calendar as well so at our university that they made it really easy for us so they gave us an actual it's like a schedule so between January to March was all about finding your research getting your 10 articles together and then March till May was such um casping your articles and then May too so and so was doing your introduction and all of that like they really broke it down amazingly for us so if you can just get a calendar split it all up into sections but month by month and get those bits done you'll be well away it's honestly massive massive help thank you Birmingham City University I'm not paid to say that I promise my next tip may be a little bit of a controversial one I'm not too sure but I'm going to say this anyway Google is your best friend right now if you're like me I don't understand research I'm not a fan of research I don't understand any of the terminology I haven't got a clue still we've done two modules now on research at university and I'm still like haven't got a clue what that terminology means and I sit in a read articles and I'm like I'm reading it but it's not going in because I'm not used to this terminology I'm not used to this way of writing it's really bizarre so Google did become my best friend I googled every single word that I didn't understand and it just really really helped me but there is also alongside this tip of Google being your best friend also there's phrase banks as well which really really helped me so it's really nice when you're trying to think of the words to structure your sentences so it sounds really good and it sounds researching academically and I'll put the I'll put this phrase bank on the link below so have a look at that that's really really massively helped me as well is the use of a phrase bank and Google define another tip of mine is if you want some help on how to do a literature review the book that we were told to use was avya 2014 something like how to do a literature review something like that I'm really sorry if I've got that wrong but I'll put it here at the bottom so by avya 2014 if you google that it'll come up your university should have the ebook our university had the ebook and the physical book if you want a physical book and that just really really helps as well to understand what qualitative research is what quantitative research is how to do the results and methods and things like that it's been it's been really really good there are other books as well out there how to do literature reviews literally google like I said and just have a look it just it just helps I think with your understanding on how to do this because if you're like me and you've never done this before haven't got a clue about research you're going to need something trust me so get reading it is a lot of reading around dissertations it's a lot of reading researching it takes up it does take up all of your hours of your life unfortunately but it has to be done if you want to pass this unfortunately but hopefully that with the use of a good book you will get in there you'll get stuck in and you'll understand it a lot more and my final last tip for you is make the most of your supervision or your supervisors you'll be designated a supervisor for your dissertation that you have one-to-ones with that you can go and ask for help you can email them make them most of that time with them so book in with them have a one-to-one write down a list of everything you want to know everything you want to ask so that you don't forget when you're there because that's something I do all of the time I'll go to a doctor or something because I never go to the doctor so I'll wait until I've got 101 things wrong with me I'm a really bad patient and I'll go in and I'll forget so I learned to write down things whenever I go into meetings now or one-to-ones or tutorials so I have my list ready I'm organised I'm prepared and you can just go over everything but please make use of them they are there to guide you to help you they don't want to see you fail so just make the most of that time with your supervisors and that is pretty much all I've got to say so I hope I've given you something that you can take away from this video that's going to help you out there but I just wanted to say lastly dissertation was something massive to me this was a massive scary thing that I've dreaded for years and years this goes back 10 years ago when I didn't want to do the degree I wanted to do the diploma purely because I didn't want to face dissertation I worried about it all through first year in second year like I said I started looking into it because I wanted to be prepared and now the time has come when I've actually finished my dissertation and I'm handing it in and it's just a weight it's like a weight has lifted off me and I realized it's not that bad okay yeah it's it's sold raining it takes a long time it's done it's not actually as bad as I made out in my head back then it is big it's a big thing dissertation and you're gonna struggle at times you're gonna tear your hair out like I said you're gonna put posts on Facebook Twitter Instagram saying you're really sick of seeing this dissertation but you know what looking back it's not as bad as I thought and now it's done I'm so happy and it's just all those years of worrying has just gone so yeah so trust me if I can do this dissertation coming from a non-academic background of failing my GCSEs not doing anything if I can get through this and write a dissertation so can you so come on put on your positivity patents you can do this get started what you are waiting for and good luck