Improving short answers
What is a short answer response?
During your degree, you will be required to complete different types of assignment. Common genres for assessment include quizzes, essays, annotated bibliographies, and literature reviews. In some cases, the lecturer requires you to give short responses without an introduction or conclusion. This means you write one or two paragraphs in response to the question. This is common for some clinical scenario case studies.
Example short answer response
Task – discuss the following questions
What question do you think this paragraph is a response to?
What strategies does the writer employ to help the text flow smoothly?
How could the text be improved?
Task – discuss the following questions
What question do you think this paragraph is a response to?
What strategies does the writer employ to help the text flow smoothly?
How could the text be improved?
Being a professional nurse in Australia requires each nurse to adopt a number of different roles: three of these include care-giver, advocate and educator. The primary role of a nurse is to care for patients and support them by helping prevent illness, caring for them when illness occurs, and preparing patients to self-manage their health conditions. In the role of care-giver, a nurse has a number of responsibilities. These include administering medications and treatments, monitoring the patient’s health and recording medical details. Therefore, it is important that the nurse is able to think critically in order to accurately assess symptoms and identify potential problems. This will help them make appropriate and timely decisions. Clearly, it is also essential that the nurse can communicate effectively, not only with the patient, but also with other members of the health care team. The nurse is usually the most familiar with the individual patient, since they monitor the patient on an ongoing basis. The nurse needs to communicate at the professional level with other members of the team, but also at the level of the patient so that they understand what is happening. This leads to the second key role of the nurse – as advocate. It is the responsibility of the nurse to advocate for the best interests of the patient and help maintain their dignity throughout the course of treatment. Patients who are unwell may not fully understand medical situations or act as they normally would. It is the role of the nurse to support the patient and represent them, such as when treatment decisions are being made. Helping patients understand their situation and treatment leads to the next key role of the nurse. The nurse as educator role starts when the patient is admitted and continues once the patient leaves the hospital. The nurse helps to build the patient’s knowledge and can act as an effective interface between the doctor and patient. This is particularly important when preparing the patient to self-manage when they leave the hospital. A nurse should ensure that the patient and their family understand what to do and what to expect in terms of their medication and medical condition. By effectively fulfilling a variety of different roles, the nurse can best serve the needs of the patient.
What strategies can you use for a short answer response?
If the lecturer does not set an essay or other long form assessment, you need to focus on three key components: get the content right first, then
Key principles for effective short answer responses
Focus on content
Focus on clarity
Focus on conciseness
Key principles for effective short answer responses
Focus on content
Focus on clarity
Focus on conciseness
present this information as clearly and directly as you can; and finally ensure that it is within the word limit – every word counts with this type of response. Short answer responses require you to demonstrate your understanding of a key area of your unit as clearly and concisely as you can. Naturally, the style of writing should be objective and formal, and your points should be supported with citations.
Content is the demonstration of your learning within the unit. Clarity means the reader does not have struggle to understand your point. Clarity can be achieved by using a clear paragraph structure, introducing and developing points in a logical way, and linking these ideas effectively. Conciseness means keeping to the word limit, adopting a direct writing style, and omitting any irrelevant content.
Paragraph structure
Introduce and discuss each point logically and link between your ideas so that the lecturer can navigate the text with ease. Clarify or define as necessary. If it would aid the reader, conclude the paragraph. Here is an example from the text above:
Being a professional nurse in Australia requires each nurse to adopt a number of different roles: three of these include care-giver, advocate and educator.
This sentence, called the topic sentence, tells the reader that three key roles will be discussed in the paragraph.
Being a professional nurse in Australia requires each nurse to adopt a number of different roles: three of these include care-giver, advocate and educator. The primary role of a nurse is to care for patients and support them by helping prevent illness, caring for them when illness occurs, and preparing patients to self-manage their health conditions.
After the topic sentence, the next sentence introduces the first of the roles (caregiver), but it also clarifies that this is the main role of a nurse. Because this writer considers care-giving as the key role of a nurse, you will notice that more words are dedicated to this compared with the other two roles. This is an example of the type of choices that writers need to make. It is important to point out that this paragraph does not simply describe the nurse’s roles; it attempts to analyse them, too. Remember that a response which only describes something will attract a lower mark than a response which describes and analyses.
The primary role of a nurse is to care for patients and support them by helping prevent illness, caring for them when illness occurs, and preparing patients to self-manage their health conditions. In the role of care-giver, a nurse has a number of responsibilities. These include administering medications and treatments, monitoring the patient’s health and recording medical details. Therefore, it is important that the nurse is able to think critically in order to accurately assess symptoms and identify potential problems. This will help them make appropriate and timely decisions. Clearly, it is also essential that the nurse can communicate effectively, not only with the patient, but also with other members of the health care team. The nurse is usually the most familiar with the individual patient, since they monitor the patient on an ongoing basis. The nurse needs to communicate at the professional level with other members of the team, but also at the level of the patient so that they understand what is happening.
At the end of this paragraph is a concluding sentence. You do not always need to conclude a paragraph. It is a choice. You may decide that the reader would benefit from a quick reminder of the key points from the paragraph or you may decide that a concluding sentence can effectively bring the discussion to a close.
By effectively fulfilling a variety of different roles, the nurse can best serve the needs of the patient.
Linking ideas together
Clarity also improves when we link ideas so that the text feels like it is flowing smoothly (this is known as coherence). We can use several devices to make a text feel more cohesive (this is not a complete list):
Use linking words
Use referring words
Use unity of voice
Repeat key words
Linking words can be simple (first/so/but/also) or more sophisticated (therefore/consequently/in addition) and function grammatically in different ways. Note that the simple linkers are not overused in the example paragraph. If you overuse them, it can make the writing style feel immature. In order to link previous ideas to the next sentence, it is very common to use referring words such as this/that. Unity of voice means choose either nurse (singular) or nurses (plural) and try to stick to it as it makes the writing feel more consistent. It is acceptable to occasionally change the voice. In this text, the key words are nurse, role and patient. By repeating them (or using a synonym such as responsibility) it reminds you and the reader of the purpose of the text. To avoid repetition, you can switch to the pronoun (he/she/them/their).
Focus on the different ways coherence is achieved in the next section of the sample text:
The nurse needs to communicate at the professional level with other members of the team, but also at the level of the patient so that they understand what is happening. This leads to the second key role of the nurse – as advocate. It is the responsibility of the nurse to advocate for the best interests of the patient and help maintain their dignity throughout the course of treatment. Patients who are unwell may not fully understand medical situations or act as they normally would. It is the role of the nurse to support the patient and represent them, such as when treatment decisions are being made. Helping patients understand their situation and treatment leads to the next key role of the nurse.
Achieving a concise and direct writing style
It is by no means easy to achieve this. Clearly, careful planning and considering what can be achieved within the given word count is essential. To make things even harder, there are no rules about how much development each point should have. This means you have to prioritise what you think is most important and only write about that. Remember you can support a point in a variety of ways, such as by giving an example, using logical reasoning or giving a statistic or citation. Some of these approaches take up more words that others. Ask yourself “Given the word limit, have I provided the reader with a satisfactory development of this point?”. Some students find the best approach is to write more than the word count and edit it down. You may also have a personal writing style which is indirect. If this is the case, you need to reflect on how to adopt a more direct style. Having someone else read your draft (such as the academic skills advisor) can help you identify this issue.
Conclusion
The advantage of doing this type of assessment is that it does not focus on academic conventions (like an annotated bibliography or report). It allows you to demonstrate your learning in a very direct way. Your starting point when doing an assignment is always “What learning outcomes does my lecturer want me to demonstrate in this assignment?”. Start by identifying the appropriate content, prioritising where necessary. Then write it in a direct objective way and support it in the usual ways. Finally, ask yourself if you have presented the information in a concise, coherent way.
Remember: get in, say it, and get out.
Identify and analyse some of the key roles of a professional nurse
Being a professional nurse in Australia requires each nurse to adopt a number of different roles: three of these include care-giver, advocate and educator. The primary role of a nurse is to care for patients and support them by helping prevent illness, caring for them when illness occurs, and preparing patients to self-manage their health conditions (Jones, 2019). In the role of care-giver, a nurse has a number of responsibilities. These include administering medications and treatments, monitoring the patient’s health and recording medical details. Therefore, it is important that the nurse is able to think critically in order to accurately assess symptoms and identify potential problems (Smith, 2020). This will help them make appropriate and timely decisions. Clearly, it is also essential that the nurse can communicate effectively, not only with the patient, but also with other members of the health care team. The nurse is usually the most familiar with the individual patient, since they monitor the patient on an ongoing basis. The nurse needs to communicate at the professional level with other members of the team, but also at the level of the patient so that they understand what is happening (White, 2018). This leads to the second key role of the nurse – as advocate. It is the responsibility of the nurse to advocate for the best interests of the patient and help maintain their dignity throughout the course of treatment (Brown, 2020). Patients who are unwell may not fully understand medical situations or act as they normally would. It is the role of the nurse to support the patient and represent them, such as when treatment decisions are being made. Helping patients understand their situation and treatment leads to the next key role of the nurse. The nurse as educator role starts when the patient is admitted and continues once the patient leaves the hospital. The nurse helps to build the patient’s knowledge and can act as an effective interface between the doctor and patient (Harper, 2017). This is particularly important when preparing the patient to self-manage when they leave the hospital. A nurse should ensure that the patient and their family understand what to do and what to expect in terms of their medication and medical condition. By effectively fulfilling a variety of different roles, the nurse can best serve the needs of the patient.
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