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DOH205/206 Research Skills Guide

Getting started with your assessment

Make sure you clearly understand your task and know what topic you are seeking information for. Check your assessment task details in your Subject Outline. 

DOH205 Assessment item 1- Clinical Case Study Assignment 

TASK
You will be provided with a patient scenario including relevant histories, charts and other findings. You must submit a written case study and discuss all clinical considerations for this patient as outlined below.  Please note: This is a condensed version of your assessment topic, please refer to your subject outline for the full details of your assessment, including the marking rubric.

The case study should include the following:

  • Introduction
  • Clinical presentation, examination and diagnosis
  • Risk assessment
  • Treatment planning & implementation of prevention
  • Discussion 
  • Prognosis
  • Conclusion

To locate relevant scholarly research you will need to Plan & Prepare

Examples: Building a keyword, synonyms and professional terms. 

Keywords                                Synonyms or related terms                                                                                                     
clinical considerations patient histories, examination tools, examination, findings, diagnoses  
oral health dental care, dental health, dental treatment, oral hygiene, oral care  
oral health risks caries, periodontal disease, oral cancer and non-carious, tooth loss  
patient group aged care, nursing home, elderly, senior, old, geriatric  

 

Does your task place any limits? These might be "in the last X years" or Australian content.

Using synonyms can assist to broaden your search. A dictionary or topic specific encyclopedia may be helpful.

DOH205: Example search strategy

A search strategy using the key concepts identified above, and combined with synonyms and relevant search operators might look like:

("aged care" OR "nursing home*") AND ("oral health" OR dental) AND risk*

A note on "search operators" used above: quotations marks "" are used to create a phrase search, AND is a Boolean operator, the brackets () are a nesting tool used to create a logical search string & the asterisk * is a truncation symbol used to expand a search, see the Developing your Search Strategy page for more information.

We'll work through how to apply a similar search strategy in Primo Search and journal databases in the next few pages of this guide.

Remember: you will need to try a range of searches. Don't stop after just one!

Library 'watch now' tutorial videos:

Finding Journal Articles

Using Library Databases

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