Through evidence appraisal and synthesis, I discovered many things about my topic of epidural use being associated with postpartum depression rates in pregnant women. Through my group’s research we were exploring multiple credible journal articles to try and answer the question of whether or not the use of epidural analgesic reduces or increases postpartum depression rates in pregnant women. While going through each journal article, almost all the findings of each article shows that there is not a strong/definite association between the use of epidurals and postpartum depression rates. The research that my group has studied showed us that these variables do not have significant statistics to back up the fact that they affect one another. My literature appraisal and synthesis have changed my original thoughts about epidural use and postpartum depression in pregnant women. I had originally thought that the use of epidural analgesics would help reduce postpartum depression rates in women, because of the pain-relieving effect that analgesics have. My findings will further impact my future nursing practice by allowing me to not recommend or discourage the use of epidurals during the delivery process regarding the fact that the effects of epidural use does not have any definite correlation with postpartum depression. Knowing this information about epidural use will help allow me to spread my knowledge of epidural use and postpartum depression and discontinue the spread of false information about these concepts. My group came across a few challenges while completing our critical appraisal assignments. Some challenges included reading the articles and trying to understand the unknown terminology and retrieving the right information for our critical appraisal questions. I had trouble with figuring out what kind of research design my articles were and what worksheets to fill out for each one. Through research and help from my group members, we figured out how to split up the work for the appraisals and helped each other define what type of worksheet to fill out for each one. My group split up the work evenly among us and made sure to peer-review each critical appraisal so that the right information was written in each box for the worksheets. Overall, I think my group made great progress in finding time to work on this assignment together and in helping each other retrieve the right information.