1. Pointers for Your critical appraisal table
Nurs 513

2. Here are a few helpful hints and reminders for your continued progression of the capstone project.
Make sure you do your assigned readings. Examples of how to do the table are given!
Melynk text: tells you what the columns are and what should be in them (Appendix C)
Table 1 In Fineout-Overholt et al. article (Part I) gives example with 4 articles
Examples of 2 posted articles that have comment boxes and then table

3. Helpful hints continued:
About your articles:
Remember, articles need to MATCH your PICOT question! Sit back and think what your parameters are for the PICOT and what your inclusion or exclusion criteria are. Do yours match the article that you are looking at? They need to.
As you read your articles, you should be underlining and making notes on them for your comments and concerns about the various pieces & how that contributes to your appraisal. appraising.
You will likely need to read the article more than once.
You may need to look up certain things as you read (e.g., is there a certain statistical test that is unfamiliar to you or was the design unfamiliar)?

4. Hints (Contd.) Appraising your articles:
Remember, just because it is published doesn’t mean it is stellar. That is why your critique/appraisal is so important!
If it turns out the article is not of good quality (based on your appraisal), you should not put it into practice, regardless of the level of evidence.
Remember, every PICOT does not lend itself to having a RCT! So you may not find one (nor will one ever be done).
Review, the assigned articles by Fineout-Overholt & Melynk AND Fachiano & Snyder. These are the step by step articles and/or they focus on appraising. Some of these were assigned earlier in the semester but remember each week is a building block of the next!!
Review the critical appraisal slides past weeks.
Look at all of the examples you can for appraising articles. I’ve given several in class but also our assigned readings have examples.

5. Hints (Contd.) Completing your table:
The draft of your table will be used for your poster but with some revisions (based on my comments). It will be more brief for the poster.
Your appraisal forms that you have completed will be useful for your table.
This includes JH form and RCA used in previous assignment
Use bullet points; not complete sentences.
Use abbreviations judiciously!
Key will appear below table as note (e.g., Dependent Variable =DV)
Reader should not have to continuously look down to define content of each bullet point (e.g., because you over-used abbreviations)
Use symbols or signs (e.g., = or > or < or arrows for increase or decrease)
Where might bold or italics emphasize a point in your table?

6. Hints (Contd.) Completing your table:
Everything can’t go into a table. You have to pick what is salient for your PICOT.
For example, some studies may have used 7 outcome variables & your PICOT only has 2. Therefore your table will only report on the 2.
Level & Quality of Ratings should appear as (e.g., II,A or III,B)
Content of your appraisal and evidence/quality column should reflect things that show how quality was impacted
E.g. if you show the quality as “C” yet you have no limitations noted, the reader cannot have any indication of how you came up with that “C” rating.
Several of the assigned readings show content of tables. Those will be useful to see how others have abbreviated necessary information.