Revise a nursing problem statement after supervisor feedback by identifying the decision behind each comment, checking the supporting evidence and updating the study consistently. A tutor’s note such as “too broad” or “unclear gap” usually requires more than replacing a few words.
The difficulty is knowing where to begin. Several comments may refer to the same underlying weakness, while one short comment may affect the population, research question and methodology. This guide turns feedback into a practical revision plan, with a worked example, a response table and a final review process.
It focuses specifically on using supervisor comments. For the initial drafting process, use our nursing research problem statement guide. For annotated comparisons across nursing topics, see weak drafts and improved versions.
Read the feedback alongside your assignment brief
Before editing, place three items together: the version your supervisor reviewed, their comments and the current assessment brief. This establishes what was actually assessed and what the assignment requires.
Do not assume every suggestion creates a new assessment requirement. A comment may identify an unclear sentence, propose one possible direction or refer to a compulsory element already in the brief. Understanding that difference helps you respond proportionately.
For example, “Could you focus on discharge communication?” may invite a scope discussion. In contrast, “Your stated population changes between the problem and question” identifies an internal inconsistency that needs correction. Both deserve attention, but they require different actions.
Check whether feedback applies to the problem paragraph alone or the whole proposal. A request to shorten background material may be local. A request to change from intervention effectiveness to patient experience may affect the entire project.
Save the reviewed version before making changes. Then create a clearly named working copy. This lets you compare the revision with the original and explain what changed without relying on memory.
Separate reasoning changes from language changes
The University of North Carolina Writing Center distinguishes revision of purpose, argument and evidence from proofreading (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, n.d.). Applied to a nursing problem statement, this means resolving the research logic before polishing grammar.
Use two passes. First, examine scope, evidence, uncertainty and alignment. Second, edit sentence structure, repetition and terminology. Otherwise, you may spend time perfecting a sentence that the revised study no longer needs.
Suppose the comment says, “This reads as a clinical background rather than a research problem.” Shortening the paragraph will not automatically resolve it. You need to identify the remaining uncertainty and explain why investigation is justified.
Likewise, changing “prove” to “explore” does not repair an unsuitable design by itself. If the method measures survey associations, the revised statement still needs to describe an association-based enquiry rather than promise causal proof.
Try writing the problem in plain language before returning to academic prose. Explain what is unresolved to another student in two or three sentences. If that explanation remains unclear, the problem is probably conceptual rather than grammatical.
Keep precise terms when they matter. However, avoid replacing familiar wording with technical language merely to make the paragraph appear more sophisticated. The reader should understand the research decision more easily after revision.
Turn each supervisor comment into a specific action
A feedback table makes broad comments easier to handle. Record the comment accurately, identify its likely meaning, choose an action and define how you will check completion.
| Supervisor comment | Decision to examine | Revision action | Completion check |
| Too broad | Which enquiry can the project address? | Narrow the population, issue or setting | One central uncertainty remains |
| Unclear gap | What does existing evidence fail to establish? | Revisit relevant studies and reviews | The gap is explicit and supported |
| Needs evidence | Which claim lacks support? | Verify the claim or remove it | Each substantive assertion has an appropriate source |
| Too descriptive | What argument justifies the study? | Connect evidence to uncertainty and significance | The paragraph explains why enquiry is needed |
| Nursing relevance unclear | What nursing role or decision is involved? | Explain the connection to practice or education | Relevance is concrete rather than asserted |
| Does not match your question | Which population or concept has changed? | Align the affected sections | Problem, aim and question concern the same study |
The interpretations are starting points, not universal definitions. Your supervisor may mean something more specific. Where a comment supports several different revisions, ask a focused question before making a major change.
Do not label a comment “done” simply because you edited the sentence beside it. Verify that the underlying issue has been addressed wherever it appears. One population mismatch can occur in the title, objectives and search strategy as well as the paragraph.
Responding to “your problem is too broad”
Begin by listing the dimensions of the proposed project. These may include patients, nurses, carers, settings, interventions, experiences and outcomes. Then identify which dimensions are essential to the central enquiry.
A paragraph covering workload, burnout, turnover, patient satisfaction and medication errors may contain several possible dissertations. Adding detail about each issue expands the problem instead of focusing it.
Choose the relationship or experience you actually intend to investigate. For example, a proposed study might focus on newly qualified nurses’ experiences of supervisory support during transition to practice. That is a different enquiry from measuring whether staffing levels predict medication errors.
Explain why your selected boundaries make sense. Restricting the project to a particular population should improve relevance or feasibility. It should not merely create an appearance of novelty.
After narrowing, check whether enough relevant evidence or accessible data remains. A very precise problem can still be impractical if it excludes almost everything the student can legitimately study.
Finally, review the question and objectives. Remove outcomes that belonged to the earlier, broader version. Otherwise, the paragraph may look focused while the proposal continues to promise several studies.
Responding to “the research gap is unclear”
Separate the care concern from the knowledge uncertainty. An undesirable situation does not automatically prove that researchers lack an answer. Conversely, extensive literature does not mean every relevant question has been resolved.
Read the studies and reviews most directly related to your proposed population and issue. Identify what they establish, what they cannot establish and whether their limitations matter to your question.
Avoid collecting authors’ suggestions for future research without examining their context. A paper may recommend a study that later publications have already completed. It may also propose a direction that your assignment cannot address.
Write a provisional gap sentence using precise language. For example: “The reviewed studies provide limited information about how this group experiences the selected care process.” Use such wording only if the search genuinely supports it.
Then connect that uncertainty to the proposed enquiry. If the gap concerns experience, a paragraph promising to establish intervention effectiveness remains misaligned.
Your supervisor should be able to follow the reasoning from the evidence to the uncertainty and then to the study purpose. If a connection depends on an assumption you have not stated, make it explicit or reconsider the argument.
Responding to “this claim needs a reference”
Identify exactly what the sentence claims. Does it describe prevalence, assert a cause, report a local pattern or claim an absence of research? Each type needs different support.
A national statistic may establish the wider importance of a condition. It does not demonstrate that a specific ward has a particular documentation problem. Similarly, a qualitative study describing participants’ experiences does not automatically estimate how common those experiences are.
Read the relevant source rather than adding a citation from a search snippet. Confirm that the population, outcome and conclusion match the sentence. If the source supports a narrower claim, narrow the wording.
When the claim cannot be supported, remove it or identify it as a question for investigation. Do not invent a percentage, local audit result or patient account to make the paragraph look complete.
Keep a small claim-to-source record. This can be a table with the sentence, source and relevant finding. It helps you verify the revision and avoids using citations as decoration.
Once the evidence is corrected, reconsider the paragraph’s argument. Removing an unsupported premise may change the justification for the entire study, so the revision may extend beyond the citation itself.
A worked supervisor-feedback revision
The following illustration is hypothetical. It does not establish a real clinical problem or research gap. Any equivalent statement in an assignment needs evidence from an appropriate search.
Original draft
Nurses do not provide enough information to patients with diabetes. This causes poor self-management, hospital admissions and low satisfaction. The study will prove that more education improves all these outcomes.
Supervisor comments
The population and setting are too broad. The causal claim needs support. What is the specific research gap? The outcomes do not match your proposed qualitative interviews.
Revision decisions
The student first selects adults with type 2 diabetes receiving primary-care nursing support. Next, they remove the unsupported claim about what nurses do and the promise to prove several outcomes. They then examine whether the literature supports an unresolved question about patients’ experiences of self-management information.
If the review supports that direction, a conditional teaching revision is:
The proposed enquiry concerns how adults with type 2 diabetes receiving primary-care nursing support experience information about self-management. A supporting literature review would need to establish the specific uncertainty about these experiences. Exploring that uncertainty could inform understanding of how nursing information is interpreted and used in everyday care.
What still needs to happen
The revision demonstrates a direction, but it is not submission-ready evidence. The student must substantiate the gap, clarify the context and ensure that the interviews and analysis can address the stated experience.
This distinction matters. A more convincing paragraph does not become defensible merely because it is clearer than the original. The underlying claims and proposed contribution still require verification.
Update the proposal beyond the problem paragraph
Compare the revised statement with the title, aim, question and objectives. Look for changes in population, setting, concepts and type of answer being sought.
If the revision changes the population, review eligibility criteria or evidence inclusion criteria. If it changes the phenomenon, revisit search terms or interview topics. If it changes the outcome, examine whether planned measures and analysis still fit.
Use our nursing research-question guide for question formulation. This article concentrates on the revision process rather than repeating the full framework comparison.
Check references to the old direction in the introduction and methodology. A proposal can contain a revised problem alongside an outdated rationale, creating the impression of two different projects.
For an approved study, identify the academic and governance implications before implementing material changes. Follow the procedures applicable to your university and project. Do not assume a supervisor’s brief wording comment authorises a different participant group or data collection activity.
Keep a record of the change, its reason and the sections affected. This will help you describe the final study accurately and explain the development of the proposal if asked.
Handle unclear or conflicting feedback constructively
Sometimes two comments appear inconsistent. One asks for greater detail, while another requests concision. They may refer to different parts of the paragraph: less general background but more precise explanation of the gap.
Before treating comments as contradictory, identify their target. Ask whether “more detail” concerns the evidence, population, significance or method. Then remove material that does not help that target.
Where the tension remains, present a short summary of your interpretation and one proposed revision. This gives the supervisor something concrete to respond to.
For example, explain that you have reduced the general disease background and used the space to clarify the evidence uncertainty. Ask whether that addresses the intended balance. Avoid asking only whether the entire paragraph is “okay”.
If feedback from different assessors affects a compulsory requirement, use the current brief and seek clarification through the programme’s normal route. Do not quietly combine incompatible designs to satisfy every suggestion.
Record the clarification with your revision notes. That way, later changes can be understood in relation to the guidance you actually received.
Review the revised version before resubmitting
Read the paragraph without the comments visible. Can a reader identify the issue, the uncertainty and the nursing relevance? Then compare it with the feedback table.
Check that you have removed unsupported causal wording, retained only relevant background and used consistent terminology. Verify every source attached to a changed claim.
Next, read the problem and aim aloud together. If the aim introduces a new population or promises a different kind of answer, revise the mismatch before resubmission.
Include a concise change summary if your supervisor requests one. State what you changed and why. Distinguish completed revisions from points that still need guidance.
Do not announce that all feedback has been addressed when one major decision remains unresolved. A clear account of the remaining issue is more useful than a general assurance.
Finally, proofread the revised text. Correct grammar and references after the study logic is stable. This preserves your time and reduces repeated editing.
Support with applying supervisor comments
Bring your reviewed paragraph, feedback and assessment brief together when seeking nursing dissertation support. A useful review identifies the decision behind each comment and helps you explain the resulting changes in your own work.
Frequently asked questions
Should I rewrite the whole problem statement?
Only when the underlying argument needs rebuilding. A local wording issue may require a small edit; a change in the research purpose may require substantial revision and updates elsewhere.
Does supervisor feedback mean my topic is unsuitable?
Not necessarily. It may identify an unclear gap or unrealistic scope. Test the issue against evidence and feasibility before deciding whether to retain, refine or replace the direction.
Can I keep my original wording if I disagree?
Explain the evidence and reasoning behind your interpretation, then seek clarification. Follow compulsory assignment requirements. Do not ignore substantive feedback without considering its implications.
How do I know a revision is complete?
Check the original comment against a visible outcome: a supported claim, a defined population or an aligned question. Editing activity alone does not demonstrate that the issue has been resolved.
Keep one clearly labelled current version for submission. Archive earlier drafts rather than editing several copies in parallel, because conflicting versions make it difficult to see which supervisor comments have been addressed. Before uploading the file, check the filename, date and document title against your revision summary. If your programme expects tracked changes, preserve them in the review copy and provide a clean reading copy only when requested. This small version check helps your supervisor assess the intended revision.
Conclusion
To revise a nursing problem statement after supervisor feedback, turn comments into decisions, resolve the evidence and scope, and update every affected part of the proposal. A clear revision record helps you show what changed and why. Finish by checking alignment and proofreading the final version.
Reference
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (n.d.) Revising drafts. The Writing Center. Available at: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/ (Accessed: 1 October 2026).
