Introduction

Note: Each assessment in this course builds on the work you completed in the previous assessment. Therefore, it is recommended that you complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.

Knowing the best practice for our patients is very important in providing safe and effective care. Understanding best practices can help nurses identify areas of care that need to be improved. To identify areas of need, nurses must use evidence from various sources, such as the literature, clinical practice guidelines (CPG), professional organization practice alerts or position papers, and protocols. These sources of evidence can also be used to set goals for improvement and best practices with an eye toward improving the care experience or outcomes for patients.

The challenge facing many care environments and health care practitioners is how to plan for change and implement changes. For if we cannot effectively implement changes in practice or procedure, then our goals of improving care will likely amount to nothing. This assessment focuses on allowing you to practice locating, assessing, analyzing, and implementing change strategies in order to improve patient outcomes related to one or more clinical goals.

This assessment will take the form of a data table to identify areas for improvement and to set one or more outcome goals, as well as a narrative describing a change plan that would help you to achieve the goals you have set.

Professional Context

One area in health care that it is necessary to consider is the environment in which nurses work. It is important that this environment evolves and changes so that all patients are adequately supported. For this assessment, you will develop a change strategy to improve the health care environment. These changes can be rooted in a desire to improve clinical outcomes and data related to assessment accuracy, drug administration, or disease recovery rates. A key skill for master’s-level nurses is to be able to evaluate clinical data and create a change plan to help drive improvements in the data to reach set goals.

Scenario

Consider a current environment. This could be your current care setting, the care setting presented in the scenario Vila Health: Using Concept Maps for Diagnosis, or a care setting in which you are interested in working. For the setting that you choose you will need to have a data set that depicts sub-optimal outcomes related to a clinical issue. This data could be from existing sources in the course, a relevant data set that already exists (a data set from the case study you used as a basis for your previous Concept Map assessment or from your current place of practice), or an appropriate data set that you have created yourself. (Note: if you choose to create your own data set, check with your instructor first for approval and guidance.)

After you have selected an appropriate data set, use your understanding of the data to create at least one realistic goal (though you may create more) that will be driven by a change strategy appropriate for the environment and goal.

Potential topics for this assessment could be:

• Consider ways to help minimize the rate of secondary infections related to the condition, disease, or disorder that you focused on for your previous Concept Map assessment. As a starting point, you could ask yourself, “What could be changed to facilitate safety and minimize risks of infection?”
• Consider how to help a patient experiencing traumatic stress or anxiety over hospitalization. As a starting point, you could ask yourself, “How could the care environment be changed to enhance coping?”

Once you determine the change you would like to make, consider the following:

• What data will you use to justify the change?
• How can the team achieve this change with a reasonable cost?
• What are the effects on the workplace?
• What other implementation considerations do you need to consider to ensure that the change strategy is successful?
• How does your change strategy address all aspects of the Quadruple Aim, especially the well-being of health care professionals?
• Once the change strategy is implemented, how would you evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the care system if the desired outcomes are met?

Instructions

Your assessment submission should include a data table that illustrates the current and desired states of the clinical issue you are attempting to improve through your application of change strategies. Additionally, you will need to explain the rationale for your decisions around your chosen change strategies, as well as how the change strategies will be successfully implemented. The bullet points below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Be sure that your change strategy addresses all of them. You may also want to read the Change Strategy and Implementation scoring guide and Guiding Questions: Change Strategy and Implementation [DOCX] to better understand how each grading criterion will be assessed.

• Develop a data table that accurately reflects the current and desired states of one or more clinical outcomes.
• Propose change strategies that will help to achieve the desired state of one or more clinical outcomes.
• Justify the specific change strategies used to achieve desired outcomes.
• Explain how change strategies will lead to quality improvement with regard to safety and equitable care.
• Explain how change strategies will utilize interprofessional considerations to ensure successful implementation.
• Communicate the change plan in a way that makes the data and rationale easily understood and compelling.
• Integrate relevant sources to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using current APA style.