the assigned discussion questions in the below Discussion Area. It is important to support what you say with relevant citations in the APA format from both the course materials and outside resources. Include the South University Online Library in your research activities utilizing not only the nursing resource database, but also those pertaining to

Based on your specialty role option (i.e., Nurse Practitioner, Nurse Educator, Nurse Informaticist, Nurse Administrator), identify a potential problem (topic) that you would like to investigate through nursing research. Begin by reading the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's (AACN) position statement on nursing research (http://www.aacn.nche.edu/publications/position/nursing-research).

Next explore South's Online Library and conduct a search to locate a minimum of three nursing research articles that have addressed the problem you have identified. The literature may not be older than 5 years. After reading the literature respond to the following:

Note your role specialization and briefly describe the problem you are interested in researching and why this is of interest to you.

Discuss your library search strategies and briefly summarize the literature you reviewed. Focus your discussion on the "problem" and

how the literature you identified provides evidence of the existence of the problem.

Include in your discussion a potential innovation that you might consider as a solution to the problem identified.

Include citations/references in APA style format, using citations where appropriate.
This is a very important class and it can be a bit challenging.

The purpose of the class is to learn how to write a research proposal. It is not to solve all of nursing's problems or save the world-you can do that when you are out of school and someone is paying you to do it :) You are learning a process in this class.

You will want to carefully pick your topic. Getting the PICOT question right is the hardest part. But, once it is right, the rest of the proposal should be easy! DO NOT pick topics such as the nursing shortage (you can't cure it in 11 weeks), the pitfalls of nursing education, why NPs are better than MDs, etc. PICK A CLINICAL TOPIC! Your life will be much easier. Remember that you will be proposing an intervention for the purposes of this class project. If you elect not to pick a clinical topic, make very sure that you will be able to meet all of the grading criteria for the research proposal.

You will want to think of a nursing/patient problem. For illustrative purposes, let's say you think that pressure ulcers are a problem. You have read research that suggests that a new mattress is the answer to pressure ulcers. So, you have two groups of patients-an intervention group that will be placed on the new mattress and a control group that will stay on the regular mattress. The outcome you are looking for, of course, is a reduction in pressure ulcer rates. So, you conduct this study on a particular unit or units over six months and compare rates. For a topic like this you will be able to find research to support your intervention. This is key to helping you with your proposal. We will talk more about this as we go along but trust me when I tell you a clinical topic is much easier for you to deal with!

The research proposal is generally something that is submitted to an IRB for approval to conduct your study. It should be written in a scholarly manner. We will be taking this one small chunk at a time.