Practice Change Simulation

Create a 7-9 minute Powerpoint presentation that reflects upon the clinical problem that you have identified in your area of nursing practice. Ventilator-associate pneumonia. As identified in Module 1. Critically appraise the research and summarize the knowledge available on the clinical problem (minimum requirement of 6 scholarly journal articles reviewed and appraised for application to practice problem). Outline a strategic plan for implementation of a practice change in your clinical practice environment based upon your findings. Describe how you intend to operationalize the practice change in your practice environment. What theoretical model will you use and how will you overcome barriers to implementation? What sources of internal evidence will you use in providing data to demonstrate improvement in outcomes? Describe evaluation methods of implementation clearly. Are there any ethical considerations?

Improve Quality Care Patient Safety Assignment 2

For this assessment, you can use a supplied template to conduct a root-cause analysis. The completed assessment will be a scholarly paper focusing on a quality or safety issue pertaining to medication administration in a health care setting of your choice as well as a safety improvement plan.

As patient safety concerns continue to be addressed in the health care settings, nurses can play an active role in implementing safety improvement measures and plans. Often root-cause analyses are conducted and safety improvement plans are created to address sentinel or adverse events such as medication errors, patient falls, wrong-site surgery events, and hospital-acquired infections. Performing a root-cause analysis offers a systematic approach for identifying causes of problems, including process and system-check failures. Once the causes of failures have been determined, a safety improvement plan can be developed to prevent recurrences. The baccalaureate nurse’s role as a leader is to create safety improvement plans as well as disseminate vital information to staff nurses and other health care professionals to protect patients and improve outcomes.

As you prepare for this assessment, it would be an excellent choice to complete the Quality and Safety Improvement Plan Knowledge Base activity and to review the various assessment resources, all of which will help you build your knowledge of key concepts and terms related to quality and safety improvement. The terms and concepts will be helpful as you prepare your Root-Cause Analysis and Safety Improvement Plan. Activities are not graded and demonstrate course engagement.

Demonstration of Proficiency

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

  • Competency 1: Analyze the elements of a successful quality improvement initiative.
    • Apply evidence-based and best-practice strategies to address a safety issue or sentinel event pertaining to medication administration. ;
    • Create a viable, evidence-based safety improvement plan for safe medication administration.
  • Competency 2: Analyze factors that lead to patient safety risks.
    • Analyze the root cause of a patient safety issue or a specific sentinel event pertaining to medication administration in an organization.
  • Competency 3: Identify organizational interventions to promote patient safety.
    • Identify existing organizational resources that could be leveraged to improve a safety improvement plan for safe medication administration.
  • Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based strategies to communicate in a manner that supports safe and effective patient care.
    • Communicate in writing that is clear, logical, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.

Professional Context

Nursing practice is governed by health care policies and procedures as well as state and national regulations developed to prevent problems. It is critical for nurses to participate in gathering and analyzing data to determine causes of patient safety issues, in solving problems, and in implementing quality improvements.

Scenario

For this assessment, you may choose from the following options as the subject of a root-cause analysis and safety improvement plan:

  • The specific safety concern identified in your previous assessment pertaining to medication administration safety concerns.
  • The readings, case studies, or a personal experience in which a sentinel event occurred surrounding an issue or concern with medication administration.

Instructions

The purpose of this assessment is to demonstrate your understanding of and ability to analyze a root cause of a specific safety concern in a health care setting. You will create a plan to improve the safety of patients related to the concern of medication administration safety based on the results of your analysis, using the literature and professional best practices as well as the existing resources at your chosen health care setting to provide a rationale for your plan.

Use the Root-Cause Analysis and Improvement Plan [DOCX] template to help you to stay organized and concise. This will guide you step-by-step through the root cause analysis process.

Additionally, be sure that your plan addresses the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the scoring guide carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.

  • Analyze the root cause of a patient safety issue or a specific sentinel event pertaining to medication administration in an organization.
  • Apply evidence-based and best-practice strategies to address the safety issue or sentinel event pertaining to medication administration.
  • Create a feasible, evidence-based safety improvement plan for safe medication administration.
  • Identify organizational resources that could be leveraged to improve your plan for safe medication administration.
  • Communicate in writing that is clear, logical, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.

Example Assessment: You may use the following to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like but keep in mind that your Assessment 2 will focus on safe medication administration.

Additional Requirements

  • Length of submission: Use the provided Root-Cause Analysis and Improvement Plan template to create a 4–6 page root cause analysis and safety improvement plan pertaining to medication administration.
  • Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your findings and considerations. Resources should be no more than 5 years old.
  • APA formatting: Format references and citations according to current APA style.

Leading People Assignment 2

For this assessment, you will create a 2-4 page report on an interview you have conducted with a health care professional. You will identify an issue from the interview that could be improved with an interdisciplinary approach, and review best practices and evidence to address the issue.

As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, your participation and leadership in interdisciplinary teams will be vital to the health outcomes for your patients and organization. One way to approach designing an improvement project is to use the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement describes it thus:

The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle is shorthand for testing a change in the real work setting—by planning it, trying it, observing the results, and acting on what is learned. This is the scientific method adapted for action-oriented learning…Essentially, the PDSA cycle helps you test out change ideas on a smaller scale before evaluating the results and making adjustments before potentially launching into a somewhat larger scale project (n.d.).

You might also recognize that the PDSA cycle resembles the nursing process. The benefit of gaining experience with this model of project design is that it provides nurses with an opportunity to ideate and lead improvements. For this assessment, you will not be implementing all of the PDSA cycle. Instead, you are being asked to interview a health care professional of your choice to determine what kind of interdisciplinary problem he or she is experiencing or has experienced in the workplace. This interview, in Assessment 2, will inform the research that you will conduct to propose a plan for interdisciplinary collaboration in Assessment 3.

It would be an excellent choice to complete the PDSA Cycle activity prior to developing the report. The activity consists of four questions that create the opportunity to check your understanding of best practices related to each stage of the PDSA cycle. The information gained from completing this formative will promote your success with the Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification report. This will take just a few minutes of your time and is not graded.

Reference

Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (n.d.). How to improve. http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/HowtoImprove/default.aspx

Demonstration of Proficiency

  • Competency 2: Explain how interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to achieve desired patient and systems outcomes.
    • Summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.
    • Describe collaboration approaches from the literature that could be relevant in establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.
  • Competency 3: Describe ways to incorporate evidence-based practice within an interdisciplinary team.
    • Identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate.
  • Competency 4: Explain how change management theories and leadership strategies can enable interdisciplinary teams to achieve specific organizational goals.
    • Describe change theories and a leadership strategy that could help develop an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.
  • Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based communication strategies to impact patient, interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes.
    • Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions; contains few errors in grammar/punctuation, word choice, and spelling.
    • Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references, exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format.

Professional Context

This assessment will introduce the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Model to create change in an organization. By interviewing a colleague of your choice, you will begin gathering information about an interprofessional collaboration problem that your colleague is experiencing or has experienced. You will identify a change theory and leadership strategies to help solve this problem.

Scenario

This assessment is the first of three related assessments in which you will gather interview information (Assessment 2); design a proposal for interdisciplinary problem-solving, (Assessment 3); and report on how an interdisciplinary improvement plan could be implemented in a place of practice (Assessment 4). At the end of the course, your interviewee will have a proposal plan based on the PDSA cycle that he or she could present to stakeholders to address an interdisciplinary problem in the workplace.

For this assessment, you will need to interview a health care professional such as a fellow learner, nursing colleague, administrator, business partner, or another appropriate person who could provide you with sufficient information regarding an organizational problem that he or she is experiencing or has experienced, or an area where they are seeking improvements. Consult the Interview Guide [DOCX] for an outline of how to prepare and the types of information you will need to complete this project successfully.

Remember: this is just the first in a series of three assessments.

Instructions

For this assessment, you will report on the information that you collected in your interview, analyzing the interview data and identifying a past or current issue that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach. This could be an issue that has not been addressed by an interdisciplinary approach or one that could benefit from improvements related to the interdisciplinary approach currently being used. You will discuss the interview strategy that you used to collect information. Your interview strategy should be supported by citations from the literature. Additionally, you will start laying the foundation for your Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal (Assessment 3) by researching potential change theories, leadership strategies, and collaboration approaches that could be relevant to issue you have identified. Please be certain to review the scoring guide to confirm specific required elements of this assessment. Note that there are differences between basic, proficient and distinguished scores.

When submitting your plan, use the Interview and Issue Identification Template [DOCX], which will help you to stay organized and concise. As you complete the template, make sure you use APA format for in-text citations for the evidence and best practices that are informing your plan, as well as for the reference list at the end.

Additionally, be sure to address the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the scoring guide carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.

  • Summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.
  • Identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate.
  • Describe potential change theories and leadership strategies that could inform an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.
  • Describe collaboration approaches from the literature that could facilitate establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.
  • Communicate with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, and using current APA style.

Additional Requirements

  • Length of submission: Use the provided template. Most submissions will be 2 to 4 pages in length. Be sure to include a reference page at the end of the plan.
  • Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your central ideas. Resources should be no more than 5 years old.
  • APA formatting: Make sure that in-text citations and reference list follow current APA style.

Portfolio Prompt: Remember to save the final assessment to your ePortfolio so that you may refer to it as you complete the final Capstone course.