Establish the purpose/reason for reviewing the literature

16 pages
15 sources
APA
Title-EMTALA
Course- healthcare law
Paper Details   Literature Review
This assignment provides an opportunity for the student to gain in-depth knowledge
about a legal or ethical issue in health care organizations through critical review and
analysis of peer-reviewed articles, legal studies, government reports, and others. It is also
an opportunity for the student to demonstrate critical thinking and communication skills.
A literature review summarizes, interprets, and critically evaluates existing literature
(peer-reviewed journal articles, government studies, associations’ reports, etc.) in order to
establish the status of current knowledge on a particular topic. Reviewing studies on a
particular topic will not only reveal what is known about a topic and what still needs to
be investigated, but also reveal what methods of research other scholars have used to
study a phenomenon; methods that students may want to use too to conduct their own
research in the future on the same topic. Conducting a literature review is thus, the most
essential part of acquiring excellent research skills, and justifying one’s research projects
whether it is for your course assignment, project seminar paper, or workplace research.

Structure of the Paper

Include a Title. For example, “Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act and Its
Impact on Patient Dumping: A Literature Review” (capitalize all words in the title; make
sure your titles are intriguing and focused on the topic of study)
1. Introduction
 Define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern thus providing an
appropriate context for reviewing the literature. What is the issue (e.g., report
statistics of how the issue/problem is affecting organizations, communities, etc.
For example, Joseph (2001) reported that a hospital in Dallas claimed an increase
of patient dumping cases of 70 in 1982 to over 200 cases in 1983; the trend has
continued over years, according to…; or controversies around birth control
issues). What has been done to address the issue? (e.g., the government
introduced a law, which purpose is to…provide a description of that law; policy)
 Establish the purpose/reason for reviewing the literature (e.g., to conduct a
systematic review of literature about the EMTALA law requirements,
interpretations, and violations. Specifically, it would address the following
questions: (1) What are EMTALA’s medical screening requirements and how
have hospitals and courts interpreted these? (2) What are EMTALA’s discharge
and transfer requirements and how have hospitals and courts interpreted these? (3)
What is EMTALA’s reverse dumping requirement and how have hospitals and
courts interpreted it? (4) How has EMTALA been enforced?).
 Point out the importance for writing this paper (e.g., (1) summarizing findings
from relatively recent legal analysis studies on EMTALA law provisions
interpretations, (2) identifying any gaps in the literature that require future
research, and (3) identifying lessons learned that could be considered by health
care providers and policy makers.).
2. Methods.
2.1 Criteria for inclusion of studies. Briefly state your criteria for selection of articles.
(e.g., 1) focus on EMTALA medical screening, discharge and transfer, reverse
dumping, and enforcement issues; 2) involve legal analysis of judicial, government,
and provider decisions and interpretations; 3) are written in English; 4) are written
between 2001 and 2014; and 5) are peer-reviewed journal articles.).
2.2 Search methods. Briefly state your search methods. (e.g., “A literature search was
undertaken using the LexisNexis, OneFile (GALE), Health Reference Center
Academic (Gale), MEDLINE (NLM), ScienceDirect (Elsevier), PubMed, other
databases. The search was conducted in May 2009 in all the aforementioned
databases simultaneously, using the combined keywords EMTALA and medical
screening, EMTALA and transfer, EMTALA and reverse dumping, and EMTALA
and enforcement.)
2.3 Retrieval of the studies for analysis. Briefly state the number of studies included in
your review. (e.g., “The search gave 1988 hits: 1564 from CINAHL, 25 from
PubMed, 270 from PsychINFO, and 129 from SocINDEX. After excluding
duplicates, a total of 1783 citations were identified and retrieved for a more detailed
evaluation. Following the criteria for inclusion of studies, altogether 14 publications
of the studies were accepted. These 14 studies are reviewed next.”).
3. Literature Review (Discussion of Studies’ Findings). This section of the paper
should focus on critical evaluation and discussion of the articles that you have
unearthed. In reviewing the articles, students should consider some of the following
issues:
 Group your research articles according to similarity of subtopics and create a
subtopic outline. Do not create a subtopic based on a single article. For example,
if your topic relates to EMTALA, your literature review may have the following
structure (use subtitles):
3.1 EMTALA Screening Requirements and Interpretations (Addresses research
question 1)
Report findings from a group of articles that focused on this topic.
3.2 EMTALA Stabilize and Transfer Requirements (Addresses research question
2)
Report findings from a group of articles that focused on this topic.
3.3 EMTALA Reverse Dumping Requirements (Addresses research question 3)
Report findings from a group of articles that focused on this topic.
3.4. EMTALA Enforcement (Address research question 4)
Report findings from a group of articles that focused on this topic.
 For each subsection, summarize individual articles/studies with as much or as little
detail as each merits according to its comparative importance in the literature,
remembering that space (length of the study) denotes significance. You may have two
to three research questions. The more research questions you have the longer the
paper will become; so, limit your paper to at least two research questions.
 Provide the reader with strong “umbrella” sentences at beginnings of paragraphs, and
brief “so what” summary sentences at the end of each subsection to aid in
understanding essential findings.
 Because your review will be based on a fewer sources (at least 13), you may not have
as many subtopic areas in the literature review.
 Remember that the Introduction section provides a background information about the
issue, why it is an issue, what has been done to address it historically, why this issue
is important to address, etc. The Literature review section, on the other hand,
reports specific research findings about the issue (e.g., Three studies (John, 2013;
Elvis, 2014; King, 2014) have found that EMTALA has been wrongly interpreted by
hospital administrators.).
4. Discussion.
4.1 Discussion of findings. Summarize major findings from the reviewed articles/studies
and state the implications for healthcare management, maintaining the focus
established in the introduction (e.g., a need for EMTALA potential changes and
solutions discussed in the articles; need for more research in a specific area).
4.2 Methodological limitations in reviewed studies. Acknowledge methodological
limitations of the reviewed research (e.g., small sample size, only in some geographic
areas, only administrators were surveyed, rather than medical staff, pertaining to
registered nurses only, studies conducted only in medium-sized hospitals, etc.)
5. Conclusion.
Provide a brief conclusion; what this review focused on and what future research
should focus on.
6. Reference list. A reference list should be included at the end of the paper.
Additional Guidelines & Suggestions:
 See sample literature review papers in D2L Content. We will discuss some in class.
 At least 15 peer-reviewed research articles should be reviewed about a legal or
ethical problem/issue in healthcare organizations.
 The written response must be at least 16 pages, 12 standard font, Times New Roman,
double-spaced. Number your pages. Use a title page.
 Do not copy and paste statistical figures and models from articles. If needed,
recreate those, but more importantly, you need to discuss them. Otherwise, the
instructor will not know what exactly you want her to pay attention to in that figure or
table.
 Use past simple tense in your literature review section (e.g., found, discovered,
developed, suggested, posited, unearthed, listed, provided, showed, revealed, etc.)
 Textbook should be used sparingly for major theories or concepts definitions.