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NURS 5990: Nursing Capstone: Literature Review

This guide provides resources for graduate-level nursing students completing their capstone research projects.

The purpose of your literature review is to:

  • Set the background on what has been researched on a topic.
  • Show why a topic is significant to a subject area.
  • Discover relationships between ideas.
  • Identify major themes & concepts.
  • Identify critical gaps & points of disagreement.

What is a Literature Review?

This following video covers what a literature review is, how to review the literature, and steps in writing a literature review.
(10 min. video)

 Literature Review: An Overview for Graduate Students, by North Caroline State University Libraries.

Finding Systematic Reviews

Systematic Reviews are scholarly articles that identify and synthesize the literature available to answer a particular research question. A systematic review may include a Meta Analysis, which is an analysis of data from several different trials. 

  • Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews provides high quality systematic reviews of research in health care and health policy.
  • CINAHL and MEDLINE also contain systematic reviews. To find them, add either "systematic review" or "meta analysis" as a keyword in your search.

example search

sample search for a systematic review