About the course itself: one credit of DNP Field Experience, converted by Walden's six to one practicum rule into 72 hours of supervised field time. A student can enroll in it repeatedly, as many as six separate times, with the count set by hours already logged. It exists for candidates who still owe hours against the 1,000-hour practice floor, so it never appears on every DNP transcript. The craft on this page belongs to the documents your field hours generate for a portfolio, and none of it should be mistaken for a weekly deliverable printed in a schedule.
Synthesis is the row where doctoral papers separate from master's papers. Summary tells a reader what each study found; synthesis tells a reader what the studies mean together, in a sentence no single source could have written. That means organizing by finding rather than by author, giving disagreement its own space, weighing studies instead of counting them, and closing with the claim your intervention will rest on. Your syllabus decides whether this reaches you as a discussion, as a written section of the project document, or as both, and no outside source can tell you which.
The position of synthesis in this manual reflects a tutoring judgment about how doctoral skills stack, since appraising single studies has to come before comparing them. It is not a reproduction of any Walden running order, because syllabi are unpublished and the course guides sit behind a student sign-in that outsiders cannot pass. Wherever your classroom rubric contradicts our sequence, follow the rubric. NURS 8600 and NURS8600 both arrive at this page.
How a synthesis row is graded
The organizing test is mechanical and quick. Read the first six words of each paragraph, and if most of them are author names, the section is a summary wearing a synthesis heading. Paragraphs that open with a claim and bring citations in as support pass the same test.
The second row wants the disagreement. A body of evidence that all points one way is rare, and hiding the studies that cut against your intervention costs more than the studies would have. Explaining why findings diverge, by setting, by dose, by population or by measure, is doctoral work.
A third row grades weighting. Six studies do not outrank two when the six are single site retrospective reviews and the two are controlled multi site trials. Say which evidence carries the argument and why, so the reader understands the shape of the body rather than its headcount.
Six moves from a full evidence table to a synthesis section
The table you built during appraisal is the raw material here, and these moves turn its rows into prose.
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Sort the table by finding rather than by author
Physically reorder the rows so studies reporting the same direction of effect sit together. The paragraph structure of your section becomes visible the moment the sorting is done.
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Name the pattern in a single sentence
Write the claim the grouped rows support before you write anything else, then treat that sentence as the paragraph's topic sentence and let the citations arrive behind it.
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Give the contradiction its own paragraph
Studies that disagree deserve more than a concessive clause. Put them together, then explain what differs about their populations, doses, settings or outcome definitions.
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Weigh before you count
Say which studies carry the argument. A sentence stating that the strongest designs point one way while smaller reports point another tells a reader more than any tally of sources.
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State what the literature has not looked at
Every project needs its gap: an untested population, a setting nobody studied, a follow up window too short to answer the question. That absence is what makes your work a contribution rather than a repetition.
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End on the sentence your intervention stands on
Close the section with the claim the rest of the project inherits, phrased so a reader can check it against the evidence you just presented.
A layout for a synthesis section
A drafting frame our writers use, not a Walden template, and the proportions should follow whatever your rubric weights most heavily.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the row |
|---|---|---|
| Organizing claim | One sentence stating what the assembled evidence supports. | A claim specific enough to be wrong, placed before any citation appears. |
| Converging findings | The studies pointing the same direction, grouped by effect. | Paragraphs opening with the finding and closing with the citations that carry it. |
| Divergent findings | Studies that disagree, with an explanation for the divergence. | A reason grounded in population, dose, setting or measurement rather than dismissal. |
| Strength of the body | An assessment of design quality, consistency and volume together. | An explicit statement of which evidence carries the most weight and why. |
| Gap in the literature | What has not been studied that your project will address. | A gap that follows from the studies just reviewed rather than from a search that stopped early. |
| Bridge to the intervention | The link from the evidence to the change you propose. | A sentence connecting the strongest finding to the specific activity your plan will run. |
Annotated sample excerpt: synthesis with a verdict attached
This original passage from our desk shows what a synthesis paragraph looks like when the claim leads and the sources follow.
Structured nurse led follow up lowers blood pressure most reliably when the nurse holds standing authority to adjust medication, and the size of the effect tracks that authority more closely than it tracks contact frequency.1 Trials in which nurses could titrate under protocol report reductions in systolic pressure roughly double those seen where nurses could only counsel and refer, a difference that persists across community clinics and hospital based practices.2 Two studies do report negligible change, and both were conducted where prescribing authority stayed with a physician reachable only by asynchronous message, which suggests the mechanism is the speed of the medication decision rather than the contact itself, a reading the evidence supports without yet having tested directly.3
- 1The paragraph opens with a claim rather than an author, and the claim is precise enough that a reader could look for evidence against it.
- 2Studies are grouped by what they found and the comparison is quantified in relative terms, so the reader sees a pattern instead of a queue of summaries.
- 3The dissenting studies get an explanation grounded in their design, and the closing sentence marks the boundary between what the evidence shows and what it merely suggests.
Send the assigned readings and the rubric attached to them, and your first premium sample is free, organized by finding, weighted by design, and closed with a claim the rest of your project can carry.
Five mistakes that cost points on a synthesis
- Paragraphs that open with author names. Whatever the heading says, a section built one study per paragraph is an annotated bibliography and gets scored as one.
- Disagreement quietly dropped. Reviewers who know the literature notice the missing studies, and the omission reads as either carelessness or convenience.
- Sources counted rather than weighed. Volume is not strength, and a claim resting on numerous weak reports is weaker than one resting on two solid trials.
- A gap that came from a lazy search. Claiming nobody has studied something invites a reviewer to find the study in one query, so tie the gap to what your own table shows.
- A synthesis that never reaches the project. If the section ends without a sentence the intervention can stand on, the next stage begins with nothing underneath it.
Pre-submission checklist
- No paragraph in the section begins with an author name
- Studies are grouped by finding rather than by publication order
- Divergent results receive an explanation, not a dismissal
- The strength of the evidence body is stated explicitly
- The gap follows from the studies actually reviewed
- A closing claim connects the evidence to the proposed change
Synthesis section stalling out?
Give us your evidence table, or just the citation list, plus the rubric. An original synthesis returns within 24 to 48 hours, built claim first, with divergence explained and the weight of the evidence stated outright, and revisions continue free until it scores where you need it.