Posted: September 30th, 2016

• Diagnostic process: Provide information on a comprehensive diagnostic work-up with rationales

Clinical Update

Clinical updates are concise articles designed for educational purposes on clinical issues that relate to practice. You can find some examples of clinical updates in the “Assessments” folder. Please note these are examples only and may not meet all the requirements of this assignment. There are also some examples of previous student papers that received a HD.

This assignment is an 1800 word clinical update on one of the topics below.
The format of your clinical update and any innovative ideas you use to present your topic is your choice but you must include:

• Introduction: Provide some epidemiological data to illustrate how relevant the topic is (Australia and worldwide), definition/explanation about the nature of the condition/disease process, objectives and scope and structure of your paper. A good introduction will get the reader’s interest.
• Aetiology & pathogenesis:
 Causes of the disease and risk factors
 Explanation of anatomy/physiology where appropriate
 Pathogenesis, i.e. how the disease progresses and complications
 Implications for public health
• Clinical manifestations: Explain the signs and symptoms.
• Diagnostic process: Provide information on a comprehensive diagnostic work-up with rationales
• Treatment:
 Implications for pharmacological management (including medication types, mode of action, dosage, side effects)
 Non-pharmacological treatment options
 Health promotion
 Provide rationales for your treatment options, based on the literature
• Conclusion: This should include a summary of the most relevant points for the practice of a registered nurse. Do not introduce new material. This could be summarised as bullet points.
General points

• Please use the assignment template provided within the current SNM Assignment Guidelines (note: there have been a few changes re layout, etc.)
• Only submit via TurnItIn, no hardcopy required, and no extra rubric!
• This assignment is all about the process of researching a topic and being able to articulate your findings in a comprehensive and logical sequence.
• Make sure you use approved abbreviations and write in the third person.
• Graphs, figures, tables and flow charts are a great way of illustrating and summarising key points. Check the SNM assignment guidelines on how to number and name these correctly.
• Your clinical update should facilitate peer learning – use an appropriate language level! Ensure that the content is relevant to nursing practice, i.e. sufficient depth of information but not too detailed either. You can assume some knowledge as you are addressing RNs, e.g. the anatomy of the heart or medical terminology.
• Support your discussion with relevant and recent literature and websites. Use evidence based research and best practice guidelines (Australian and international if relevant, e.g. WHO).
• Read the marking criteria of the rubric; it is a good guide for how much emphasis needs to be placed on each section.
• Although the general format of the assignment is like the clinical update articles, the formatting is still according to the SNM Assignment Guidelines with regards to layout (font, spacing, margins) and refe