Continuing your education. Part 6: writing essays

Having an essay to write can be a little daunting. If you have not written essays for a few years, you may feel quite lost and not really know where to start. It is easy to spend several hours staring at a blank sheet of paper or computer screen or even avoid sitting down to write the essay in the first place by finding lots of more important jobs to do, like the washing up or hoovering the living room.

If you see your essay as a large 2 000-word single piece of work then it is easy get frightened by it and not know where to start. What works for me and for the nursing students I have taught over a number of years is to see your essay as a number of smaller pieces of work and to approach it in a step-by-step way.