How to Write a Nursing Case Study: From Theory to Practice

Lots of non-nursing students have the mistaken notion that nursing students do not have to write a lot. After all, they spend their time in biology and chemistry labs and do field experiences.

Actually, there is a long history of writing for such students:

• They must learn how to write a nursing entrance essay because no one can get into nursing school without one. They often struggle with these, do some research, and look for tips on writing a nursing school admission essay.
• If these students are looking for financial aid, they may indeed have to compose an amazing nursing scholarship essay.
• Many courses in medical fields require essays, research papers, lab reports, and more. And many of them are really challenging because they are all on scientific topics in nursing and often involve some lab research. A typical medical school essay, for example, will involve research of existing literature and the setting up of a study based upon that literature.

Writing a Nursing Essay

Nursing students will find that a basic essay assignment will have the same structure as essays they have written for non-medical courses – introduction, body, and conclusion. The one thing that may differ in the essay writing process may be the formatting. It is common for Harvard formatting to be required in medical programs, so students will want to research Harvard strategies for best essay writing. The “rules” are definitely a bit different.

The other caveat in all of this is that medical students’ essays do regularly involve some lab research that the student has conducted. In these cases, the conclusion will be a bit different from that of another type of essay. Often, the conclusion must speak to the significance of the results of a study. Learning how to write a conclusion for a nursing essay can be a bit challenging and will take some practice.

Writing That Nursing Case Study

It is inevitable. As nursing students move into their upper-level coursework, they will be spending far more time in hospitals, completing lots of field experience. And there is coursework associated with those practices. Part of that coursework will involve one or more case study essays. These are different from any other writing assignments you have had in the past. Let’s look at how a case study is structured – while specific department guidelines may vary a bit, the elements will be common.

What is a Case Study?

A nursing case study is an in-depth study of a patient that is encountered during the student’s daily practice in a practicum. They are important learning experiences because the student can apply classroom/theoretical learning to an actual situation and perhaps make some conclusions and recommendations. It will require lots of planning of methodology, literature reviews, and careful documentation as the case study proceeds.

How to Write a Case Study in Nursing: Sections of a Case Study

There are three large sections: Information about the Patient, the Nurse’s Assessment of the Patient’s Status, and the Treatment Plan, along with Recommendations. Within each large section, there are sub-sections.

Section 1 – Patient Status

This section includes demographic information, the patient’s medical history, and the current patient’s diagnosis, condition, and treatment.

Here, you will obviously speak about the patient – and you will commit all of this information to writing. Do not rely on your memory – write everything down. You will also need to explain why the information is important to include in your study. You will need to include the reasons why the patient sought medical care and make note of the first symptoms the patient experienced. Next, you will identify the subsequent diagnosis that was made.

Given the diagnosis, what is the process/progression of the disease? You should include its causes, the symptoms, and what you have observed. Describe what your role as a nurse will be.

Section 2 – Nursing Assessment

You will need to prepare your own assessment of the patient’s condition. And as you produce that assessment, be certain to explain why you have made each assessment. For example, suppose a patient has a diagnosis of cancer. One of the symptom presentations is difficulty in urination. You will need to document that urination issue and suggest potential causes of it. Then, you will need to come up with options for treatment based on the potential causes. And, in this case, how will you determine the cause of the issue?

Section 3 – The Current Treatment and Recommendations for Improving It

Describe the treatment – medication, therapy, etc. and explain why each treatment is appropriate for the disease. You will also need to discuss how the treatment plan is improving the patient’s quality of life.

What are the treatment goals? What are the benchmarks for assessing success, and how, specifically, will it be documented?

The Implementation and Documentation

Once the treatment has been implemented, it will be your job to document each treatment activity – time, dose, etc. – and then track the improvement that does or does not occur. Suppose, for example, that you begin a regimen of a diuretic for your cancer patient. How will you determine success? How long will you implement the treatment to determine success or not? And if it is not successful, what is your next treatment option?

The data you gather must be carefully recorded and then reported in this section of your case study. This is the same as any scientific study. You must also analyze the data before you make decisions about the efficacy of the treatment plan and come to conclusions.

Toward the end of this section, you will be making recommendations – they may be simply to continue the current treatment plan; you may have conducted some research that shows another or an additional treatment plan is warranted. In this case, you may very well recommend this new treatment plan. Just remember, you must justify any recommendation you make, and usually, this comes from the medical research literature.

Crafting a nursing case study really has two major tasks.

• First, you select a patient, and begin to collect history. You also set up treatment plans and collect data to determine the efficacy of the plan and then determine your recommendations.
• Second, you actually have to write up the final piece. And it must be impeccably written.

If you doubt your essay writing skills, use a case study writing help. While there are many writing services out there, you need one that has a dedicated team of researchers and writers experienced in creating medical case studies. You need a custom nursing essay writing service that exists only to help students in nursing programs, and TopEssayWriting provides all of that. Our experts are familiar with the style, tone, formatting, and terminology and will be able to process your paper quickly.