 back to the vlog. My name is Claire Carmichael. I'm a nurse lecturer and today I'm going to be answering a question from somebody who's asked me to do this video. So the question is can you do a video on how to do well in our higher education diploma health science access course, how to write an essay plan and how to get information from a book and put it into your own words for an essay. Absolutely three points there, three different things. So I'm going to do a video covering all of those points and a big thank you for requesting this. If anyone's got any requests, anything they want to know more about that I haven't done before put a comment below. I will get to it if I can. I will do it like within a week or two if I can and I've got too much on I won't obviously. But if you have something that you think this would make a really good vlog or I want to know more about this put a comment below check my videos in case I haven't just to check that I haven't done it already before and I will see what I can do for you. So the first point the first question was how to do well in your access course is probably the exact same advice as university. So have a look at my previous vlogs on how to get on at university, things to do in your first weeks and things like that because they're kind of the same the access course prepares you really really well for university in the terms of workload assignments and that sort of thing the referencing all those sort of little bits that you need to do well in university the access course is going to help you get set up for that. So all of my tips for university that I've given applies to the access course as well because you're going to have assignments. So go and have a look at my assignment tips video. Go and have a look at these different things that I've already put out there because they're all relevant to the access course. My main tip for this is stay organized and prioritize your workload because I know the access course you can have a lot of assignments all at once and things like that. So have a look and see what is due in first and just make sure that you're staying organized managing your time well on the access course. I know I did my access course and I also worked at the same time because I wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. So it's trying to balance your time as well with that. All of my tips on assignments and things like that is completely relevant to the access course. So go back and have a look at those videos because they're relevant. The second question was how to write an essay plan. Now for me personally I wasn't the sort of person that could sit and plan out a whole essay that just wasn't me. I like to just get straight to the point. However I did do some things to help me structure my assignment. Again go back to my assignment tips video because I've got a lot of these tips already in that video but mainly for the planning stage of your assignment. I'm going to try and cover that now for you. But the first thing you want to do is what is it saying on your assignment brief? Break it down because I know assignment briefs can be a bit gobbledygook in a way and you don't understand the assignment brief and you're thinking what on earth is this person asking of me especially if you haven't come from an academic background. If you haven't been in college or school you haven't done A levels, you haven't done the access course, you haven't done anything for a number of years. You'll be reading that thinking what is this because you don't understand it because it's written in an academic way. This is a nursing degree so it's got to be written in that sort of way. So the first thing you want to do is break it down, break down the assignment brief, highlight the key important information that you want to add into your assignment. You need to add it all into your assignment but just highlighting the important bits that you want to get in there will be a massive help for structuring your assignment. Also have a look at the University of Nottingham. They did an assignment brief guideline which is really really good. I'm going to put it in the details below. Assignment brief is really really good and it breaks down bit by bit your assignment brief and what these words mean and what you should be doing. And if you don't understand anything in your assignment brief like there might be certain words and things that you think what does that even mean? Google. I know we say don't google things but google the words that you want to find or the meaning behind a word or something like that. I did this for almost all of my assignments and especially more so for my dissertation at the end was because I didn't understand the academic words and I didn't know fully what they wanted from me so I used to google all of the words to get a better understanding of what this means and then I could understand my assignment brief and then I could start writing. So writing your assignment or having a plan so you've got your assignment brief, you now understand what's expected of you from your assignment brief, you understand the word in now so how do you plan to write this assignment? For me if it gives you an option so a lot of assignments will have case studies attached to them so read this case study and then write your assignment based on that case study. Some of them will give you topics to do so I always pick the one that I liked the most because it just helped me write the assignment and it wasn't such a chore so if there was anything sexual health related anyone that knows me knows that I forgot a sexual health background I would always pick the sexual health conversations because doing that in assignment is really interesting to me and it doesn't make it some sort of boring task like I really really enjoyed going out and finding the information and writing about it because it was something I was really interested in so write about what you love and it won't be too bad. The next thing I did when I was writing my assignment was I got the assignment brief so the little subheadings you should have a little section that says what's expected of you from this assignment and it should have bullet points of some sort every university will be different but we always had a separate box that says right we want you to describe the biology of asthma for example then we want you to show critical analysis of health promotion for example this is a really bad assignment that I'm giving you here and then thirdly what is the nurse's role in that health promotion asthma whatever you're going to be talking about there's three steps there's three bullet points there in that section to say what is it explain a bit more detail use critical analysis evidence-based practice all that jazz and then as a nurse what on earth are you going to do about it how do you interpret it all of the things that you've done and put it into your role as a nurse that's usually roughly what assignments want you to do they want you to understand the evidence they want you to apply the evidence and what it's going to help you as a future nurse for your patients or how it's going to help you as a future nurse for your patients so I would then take those bullet points what you want me to write about discuss critical analysis evidence-based role of the nurse whatever it is they want you to write about highlight it copy and paste it onto a separate word document this is what I did so you've got those as subheadings so I know when I'm writing my assignment under each subheading that I've just created I know I'm hitting the assignment brief points I've got it there ready for me I'm just going to go out and find the research and do my evidence do my wider reading gonna write about it and then once you've finished writing your assignment remove the subheadings because you shouldn't be having unless they want you to put subheadings and just link them all together using linking words like furthermore following this evidence blah blah blah have a look at Manchester phrase bank link below they will give you amazing linking words and how to structure an assignment really really well I used Manchester phrase bank was my go-to for everything it was really really good and it's something I use throughout all of my assignments to help me just structure a lot better and that is genuinely how I would structure my assignments literally just copy and pasting those little headings from the assignment brief onto a separate word document and I would start there what is this section asking of me I'd break it down into the sections of the bullet points what's this asking of me okay right about that move on to the next one what is this asking making sure you cover those crucial points in the assignment brief because if you don't hit all of those criterias you will be failing unfortunately your assignment and that's basically all I would do to write my assignment I wouldn't do any fancy planning or having a planner or anything like that I would literally just copy and paste those bullet points and then go from there and just fill in those subheadings and then remove the subheadings at the end and make it flow nicely and that was it job done and then obviously you have to add your introduction and your your conclusion and things like that and just another tip because sometimes I've seen it before where people have written their assignment but they haven't quite met the assignment brief does that make sense they think that they have because they've included a legal aspect of some sort but actually all they've done is put some brief sentence like one line and that's them that's them said or I've met the assignment brief because I've put in a line about the legal aspects of whatever duty of candor I don't something like that and but actually you haven't you need to go into detail you need to show your understanding of what that legal aspect is you need to go into the legal aspects the description of it critically analyzing it you can't just be putting one little line and saying well it's in there so I've passed no you have to show understanding you have to show wider reason it has to be a nice big discussion about the subject to pass and then the last question was how to get the information from a book or a journal article and interpret it and into your own words for an assignment this can be tricky because the last thing you want to do is copy word for word and then commit plagiarism and then failing because of that that's the last thing we want to do don't do that people and so something I did again going back to picking a topic you're really interested in or you're knowledgeable in so sexual health I used to work in sexual health so my knowledge was there so I knew if I've got a topic on sexual health I knew I could write about it without looking up the evidence because I worked there for nearly six years I've got all this knowledge so I would write about it and then I would go and find the references to back up what I've just said then I know I'm not going to be committing any plagiarism because that is literally my own words from experience and then I'm just backing it up with evidence because the evidence is out there because sexual health is huge and there's always always stuff out there on sexual health the same with obesity asthma for example there's so many evidence-based practices there's so many research guidelines and stuff like that there's so many websites you can use loads of stuff out there for different conditions so if you're knowledgeable on something that would be my advice to just write and then find the evidence to back up what you're saying that's the way I always wrote my assignments and I've never had a problem thankfully fingers crossed I'm never going to have any problems but if you don't know about something but you want to write about it again I'm going to use asthma go back to asthma before I started university I didn't have a clue about asthma so something I had to do was go out and do my research so you go out and you read about asthma you read until it's coming out your ears and you fully understand what is asthma and then you write about it and then you find the evidence to back up what you're writing about another thing you could do is watch if again if you want to talk about the physiology of asthma for example but you don't know where to start because you don't know anything about asthma watch some youtube videos this is what I did the karn academy are amazing there are other youtubers out there that do fantastic things but watch some youtube videos get a better understanding so you know what asthma is and how it affects the body and things like that just so that you can get a better understanding of that to be able to write about it that's something that really really helped me as well and then you can write about it and again going back don't reference youtube please never reference youtube in your assignments make sure you're using high quality references so you're going to be looking at research papers journal articles academic writing academic articles don't just use google.com or random websites because that's not showing good quality references and we need good quality references as nurses we can't just go on google.com unfortunately for nursing we have to go by evidence-based practice what does the research say why are we doing what we're doing is the research and evidence to back up what i'm about to do to this patient because it's patient safety at the end of the day this is why we go by evidence-based practice so we have to use that in our assignments anyway i'm going to get my laptop i'm going to find a random article now and try and show you how i would write about that or interpret it into an assignment without plagiarism if i can so here we go i have found the official statistics for the sexually sexually transmitted infections screening for chlamydia in england a 2021 report this is an official body it's the government it's the uk health secretary agency it was a recent study that was done in 2021 so these are the first things that i'm checking you know is it a legitimate company organization can i use this in my assignment is it going to look good it's from the government it's statistics it's going to look good especially when talking about sexual health i've picked sexual health just because it's the easy go to for me um so yeah so if i'm talking about sexual health impact of sti rates for example and my role as a nurse in that that's what i'm going to be talking about in this assignment that i've made up in my head right now so the main points this says this tells you everything you need to say if you if you find an article if you find a journal piece if you're looking at research papers have a look at that abstract because that abstract at the start is going to tell you everything you need is this what i'm about to speak about yes i'll use it does this answer the question or whatever i'm talking about no get rid of it move on don't bother bother wasting your time reading the rest of it that abstract is going to tell you everything it's going to save you a lot of time so this main points page at the very beginning is going to save me reading through this whole article so main points here we go the main points as we can see reading all of this sti rates has gone up in the last couple of years it has gone up there has been more diagnosis there's been more testing as well as a result there is here we go again more diagnosis is obsiphalous there are and then it talks about the impact of sti so the impact of the impact of sti is still higher in young people between 15 to 24 and in certain black ethnic groups as well as gbmsm which stands for gay bisexual men who have sex with men and then it goes on to talk about the chlamydia screening program so the chlamydia screening program was was set up for this reason because it's targeting the young people because they are they've always been for the last however many years the greatest risk for an sti unfortunately so they set up the chlamydia screening program to screen everybody between those ages regardless just get them screened if you can just to try and prevent that's why that was set up so what am i going to write about how do i turn this information into the assignment without directly quoting word for word i would literally just look at this so it's talking about an increase in numbers so i would literally just type and say the government statistics or what's this called the uk health agency 2022 because it was updated in 2022 uk health agency 2022 shows in this recent survey or this recent research that the impact of sexually transmitted infections has risen you don't need to put separate infections whatever it shows they have risen you're not interpreting anything you're not copying the words you're just putting this into your own words here so as you can see the main points impact of stis has risen and then you could go on to say you know the uk health agency also state that anyone that's aged between 15 to 24 in ethnic groups gb msn n groups are at the highest risk of sexually transmitted infections so you're looking at statistics statistics has gone up you're looking at the highest group now we're going to speak about okay what are we going to do about prevention what is your role as the nurse in that so here we go main prevention messages you can interpret this bit now because it tells you here in the article what you need to do and you're going to rewrite all of this in beautiful writing and back it up with some other evidence because there will be other research papers out there as well talking about health promotion in sexual health so you're going to go and find some separate resources to wider your reading and get brucey brownie points for that so yeah so in this section main sti prevention messages you might want to include one from this page and then i've just gone off and found another page from the government again so this is from the office for health improvement and disparities again march 2022 it's current and we can include some of the bits on here so something really really good is to add is obviously your critical analysis so health promotion why is that going to help because it's going to decrease those numbers hopefully that we've seen at the start but what are the consequences of poor sexual health just to show the pros and the cons the critical analysis you know both sides of the situation so you might want to add some of this into it and show actually if i don't do my role as a nurse and someone receives bad consequences as a result this is what could happen this is what you're going to show you know this is going to happen as a result but then you could also talk about around that and look for something about empowerment empowering your patient you know it's not your responsibility to follow your patient around get them to use condoms and safe sex and all of that it's also that responsibility of your patient it's about empowering your patient and if they're not listening to your advice they might go off and do this anyway regardless of your health promotion so it's finding other bits of evidence that says this to cover yourself as well so looking at the good the bad the ugly and the conclusion of good sexual health promotion another good tip that i learned was when you find an article or research paper or something like that look at the reference list because the reference list will give you a whole load of new evidence to look at this is something i've always always done i think it was someone called it the snowball effect or something like that snowballing or something i don't know if there's a real thing that terminology but someone told me that but yeah but that's something that i did as well if i was really struggling for evidence but i found one really good paper or something like that i would go to the reference list and you'll just end up finding a load of stuff from that but one of the things on this page that we've just looked at sexual and reproductive health applying all our health at the bottom here if you look promoting sexual health in professional practice so this is another survey a completely different survey so if you click on that survey you've got that's three references that you've just found done and then you can have a look at that survey and show what this survey says what did the survey say a survey says but basically when you're writing your assignment you're going out there you're reading something and then it's your interpretation of what you've just read onto paper so you're not copying word for word you're reading it you're understanding it and then you're writing about it in a different way so it's you have to go into sort of details of what your understanding is of what you've just read so not just saying this survey says that chlamydia is high in 15 to 24 year olds you want to be talking okay why why does that matter always ask yourself why does this matter why am i saying this answer your question in your assignments don't put the question obviously but you're going to be saying you know the highest impact of stis is 15 to 24 year olds this is important because of infertility ever you want to talk about the impact of me as a role as a nurse this is how it's going to impact me this is why that these statistics matter you just need to keep that in your mind that don't just make a statement you need to reference that statement you need to put your understanding of that statement and why it's important and why you've just put that statement don't just put random statements for fun and then move on you have to show your understanding of the impact and that will just make you top level passing your assignment as long as it's good obviously you can't just be writing any old rubbish um but that should be getting you some brucey bonus points if you're if you're really good at just describing what you've just read why it's impacting and pros cons critical analysis back it up with evidence or the research papers and things like that and you'll just be well away