Evaluate the success of a current quality improvement initiative through recognized benchmarks and outcome measures.
Quality Improvement Initiative Assignment
Deliver a 5–7-page analysis of an existing quality improvement initiative at your workplace. The QI initiative you choose to analyze should be related to specific disease, condition, or public health issue of personal or professional interest to you.
Too often, discussions about quality health care, care costs, and outcome measures take place in isolation—each group talking among themselves about results and enhancements. Because nurses are critical to the delivery of high-quality, efficient health care, it is essential that they develop the proficiency to review, evaluate performance reports, and be able to effectively communicate outcome measures related to quality initiatives. The nursing staff’s perspective and the need to collaborate on quality care initiatives are fundamental to patient safety and positive institutional health care outcomes.
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Toggle Drawer Context
The purpose of the report is to assess whether specific quality indicators point to improved patient safety, quality of care, cost and efficiency goals, and other desired metrics. Nurses and other health professionals with specializations and/or interest in the condition, disease, or the selected issue are your target audience.
Toggle Drawer Questions to Consider
As you prepare to complete this assessment, you may want to think about other related issues to deepen your understanding or broaden your viewpoint. You are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of your professional community. Note that these questions are for your own development and exploration and do not need to be completed or submitted as part of your assessment.
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Toggle Drawer Resources
Suggested Resources
The resources provided here are optional. You may use other resources of your choice to prepare for this assessment; however, you will need to ensure that they are appropriate, credible, and valid. The Nursing Masters (MSN) Research Guide can help direct your research, and the Supplemental Resources and Research Resources, both linked from the left navigation menu in your courseroom, provide additional resources to help support you.
Capella Resources
Capella provides a thorough selection of online resources to help you understand APA style and use it effectively.
APA Module.
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Assessment Instructions
Preparation
You have been asked to prepare and deliver an analysis of an existing quality improvement initiative at your workplace. The QI initiative you choose to analyze should be related to a specific disease, condition, or public health issue of personal or professional interest to you. The purpose of the report is to assess whether specific quality indicators point to improved patient safety, quality of care, cost and efficiency goals, and other desired metrics.
Your target audience consists of nurses and other health professionals with specializations or interest in your selected condition, disease, or issue. In your report, you will define the disease, analyze how the condition is managed, identify the core performance measurements used to treat or manage the condition, and evaluate the impact of the quality indicators on the health care facility:
Note: Remember, you can submit all, or a portion of, your draft to Smarthinking for feedback, before you submit the final version of your analysis for this assessment. However, be mindful of the turnaround time for receiving feedback, if you plan on using this free service.
The numbered points below correspond to grading criteria in the scoring guide. The bullets below each grading criterion further delineate tasks to fulfill the assessment requirements. Be sure that your Quality Improvement Initiative Evaluation addresses all of the content below. You may also want to read the scoring guide to better understand the performance levels that relate to each grading criterion.
Analyze a current quality improvement initiative in a health care setting. Evaluate a QI initiative and explain what prompted the implementation. Detail problems that were not addressed and any issues that arose from the initiative.
Evaluate the success of a current quality improvement initiative through recognized benchmarks and outcome measures. Analyze the benchmarks that were used to evaluate success. Detail what was the most successful, as well as what outcome measures are missing or could be added.
Incorporate interprofessional perspectives related to initiative functionality and outcomes. Integrate the perspectives of interprofessional team members involved in the initiative. Detail who you talked to, their professions, and the impact of their perspectives on your analysis.
Recommend additional indicators and protocols to improve and expand quality outcomes of a quality initiative. Recommend specific process or protocol changes as well as added technologies that would improve quality outcomes.
Communicate evaluation and analysis in a professional and effective manner, writing content clearly and logically with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Integrate relevant sources to support arguments, correctly formatting citations and references using current APA style.
Submission Requirements
Length of submission: A minimum of five but no more than seven double-spaced, typed pages.
Number of references: Cite a minimum of four sources (no older than seven years, unless seminal work) of scholarly peer reviewed or professional evidence that support your interpretation and analysis.
APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to current APA style and formatting.
Assessment 2 Example
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy
For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
Quality Improvement Initiative Assignment