Submit your 20-25 page final capstone project that synthesizes the work you completed in the previous four assessments.

Introduction

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

Congratulations! The finish line is in sight for both the capstone project you have been working on all quarter and your Master’s of Science in Nursing program. Take a moment to appreciate all you have accomplished and give yourself a pat on the back; you have earned it!

Your final submission for your capstone project will bring together all of the sections you have worked on throughout this course, as well as the relevant revisions you have made to those sections based on feedback from your instructor, as well as feedback you have received or observations you may have made during your practicum experience. True professionals can learn to strive for continuous improvement in their work and incorporate feedback from colleagues and leaders to help scaffold improvement efforts. As a master’s-level nurse you will be expected to create and implement plans and evaluate their outcomes. Being able to envision a pathway for a project to move from the idea phase all the way through the evaluation phase is a critical skill. By successfully synthesizing the various sections of this project together into one final artifact, you will have demonstrated your competence in this essential skill.

Preparations

• Read Guiding Questions: Final Project Submission [DOC]. This document is designed to give you questions to consider and additional guidance to help you successfully complete this assessment.
• 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.
  • What is the most useful skill or concept you learned while pursuing your MSN degree?
  • How will you leverage your degree to help you reach your ideal practice career path?
  • How will you be able to apply the work you have done on your capstone project to improve your personal practice?

Instructions

Note: The assessments in this course are sequenced in such a way as to help you build specific skills that you will use throughout your program. Complete the assessments in the order in which they are presented.

For your final capstone project submission you will synthesize the work you completed in the previous four assessments. Please make sure that you have made relevant revisions as suggested by your instructor, as well as relevant additions that you uncovered during your practicum experience. The only brand-new content that you will need to create for this assessment is an Abstract and an Introduction.

This final submission will be graded using the seven program outcomes (POs) for the Master’s of Science in Nursing program. As a reminder they are:

1. Lead organizational change to improve the experience of care, population health, and professional work life while decreasing cost of care.
2. Evaluate the best available evidence for use in clinical and organizational decision making.
3. Apply quality improvement methods to impact patient, population, and systems outcomes.
4. Design patient- and population-centered care to improve health outcomes.
5. Integrate interprofessional care to improve safety and quality and to decrease cost of care.
6. Evaluate the ability of existing and emerging information, communication, and health care technologies to improve safety and quality and to decrease cost of care.
7. Defend health policy that improves the experience of care, population health, and professional work life while decreasing cost of care.

In addition, you will be assessed on how well you incorporated the feedback you received from your instructor on your previous work in this course via the following criterion:

• Integrate writing feedback to improve the clarity and quality of final product.

You will also be assessed on the completion of hours toward your practicum experience.

• Demonstrate completion of hours toward the practicum experience.

See the scoring guide for specific grading criteria related to these requirements.

Please carefully review the outline below to see which parts of the final submission will align to which program outcomes. (Note: The bullet points in the outline correspond to the grading criteria from your previous assessments. It may be worth putting in some extra revisions on the material related to criteria on which you did not previously score as well as you would have liked. You may also wish to read the Guiding Questions: Final Project Submission document to better understand how each aspect of your submission will be assessed.) It is important to remember that if you do a quality job addressing the points below, you will meet all of the program outcomes. The alignment is provided for transparency, but do not become preoccupied with how each point will feed into the scoring guide.

Abstract

• Summarize the purpose, approach, and any relevant findings of the final capstone project submission (PO #1).

Introduction

• Summarize your need, target population, and setting (PO #1).
• Provide a high-level overview of your intervention plan (PO #4).
• Justify the importance of your need and intervention plan (PO #1).
• Provide a high-level overview of your implementation plan (PO #4).
• Provide a high-level over view of your evaluation plan (PO #4).

Reminder: these instructions are an outline. Your heading for this this section should be Problem Statement and not Part 1: Problem Statement.

Part 1: Problem Statement

Need Statement

• Analyze a health promotion, quality improvement, prevention, education or management need (PO #1).

Population and Setting

• Describe a target population and setting in which an identified need will be addressed (PO #4).

Intervention Overview

• Explain an overview of one or more interventions that would help address an identified need within a target population and setting (PO #3).

Comparison of Approaches

• Analyze potential interprofessional alternatives to an initial intervention with regard to their possibilities to meet the needs of the project, population, and setting. (PO #5).

Initial Outcome Draft

• Define an outcome that identifies the purpose and intended accomplishments of an intervention for a health promotion, quality improvement, prevention, education or management need (PO #4).

Time Estimate

• Propose a rough time frame for the development and implementation of an intervention to address and identified need (PO #1).

Part 2: Literature Review

• Analyze current evidence to validate an identified need and its appropriateness within the target population and setting (PO #2).
• Evaluate and synthesize resources from diverse sources illustrating existing health policy that could impact the approach taken to address an identified need (PO #7).

PART 3: INTERVENTION PLAN

Intervention Plan Components

• Define the major components of an intervention plan for a health promotion, quality improvement, prevention, education, or management need (PO #4).
• Explain the impact of cultural needs and characteristics of a target population and setting on the development of intervention plan components (PO #4).

Theoretical Foundations

• Evaluate theoretical nursing models, strategies from other disciplines, and health care technologies relevant to an intervention plan (PO #6).
• Justify the major components of an intervention by referencing relevant and contemporary evidence from the literature and best practices (PO #2).

Stakeholders, Policy, and Regulations

• Analyze the impact of stakeholder needs, health care policy, regulations, and governing bodies relevant to health care practice and specific components of an intervention plan (PO #7).

Ethical and Legal Implications

• Analyze relevant ethical and legal issues related to health care practice, organizational change, and specific components of an intervention plan (PO #1).

Part 4: Implementation Plan

Management and Leadership

• Propose strategies for leading, managing, and implementing professional nursing practices to ensure interprofessional collaboration during the implementation of an intervention plan (PO #5).
• Analyze the implications of change associated with proposed strategies for improving the quality and experience of care while controlling costs (PO #1).

Delivery and Technology

• Propose appropriate delivery methods to implement an intervention which will improve the quality of the project (PO #3).
• Evaluate the current and emerging technological options related to the proposed delivery methods (PO #6).

Stakeholders, Policy, and Regulations

• Analyze stakeholders, regulatory implications, and potential support that could impact the implementation of an intervention plan (PO #5).
• Propose existing or new policy considerations that would support the implementation of an intervention plan (PO #7).

Timeline

• Propose a timeline to implement an intervention plan with reference to specific factors that influence the timing of implementation (PO #1).

Part 5: Evaluation of Plan

• Define the outcomes that are the goal of an intervention plan (PO #4).
• Create an evaluation plan to determine the impact of an intervention for a health promotion, quality improvement, prevention, education, or management need (PO #3).

Part 6: Discussion

Advocacy

• Analyze the nurse’s role in leading change and driving improvements in the quality and experience of care (PO #1).
• Explain how the intervention plan affects nursing and interprofessional collaboration, and how the health care field gains from the plan (PO #5).

Future Steps

• Explain how the current project could be improved upon to create a bigger impact in the target population as well as to take advantage of emerging technology and care models to improve outcomes and safety (PO #6).

Reflection on Leading Change and Improvement

• Reflect on how the project has impacted your ability to lead change in personal practice and future leadership positions (PO #1).
• Reflect on the ways in which the completed intervention, implementation, and evaluation plans can be transferred into your personal practice to drive quality improvement in other contexts (PO #3).

Address Generally Throughout

• Integrate resources from diverse sources that illustrate support for all aspects of the project as appropriate throughout the final submission (PO #2).
• Clearly, concisely, and cohesively articulate a health care need, population, setting, stakeholders, supporting evidence, intervention, and evaluation (PO #6).
• Integrate writing feedback to improve the clarity and quality of final product.

Additional Requirements

• Length of submission: 20–25 pages (including references).
• Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
• Number of resources: 12–18 resources.
• APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to current APA style.
• Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.

Competencies Measured

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

• Competency 1: Lead organizational change to improve the experience of care, population health, and professional work life while decreasing cost of care.
• Competency 2: Evaluate the best available evidence for use in clinical and organizational decision making.
• Competency 3: Apply quality improvement methods to impact patient, population, and systems outcomes.
• Competency 4: Design patient- and population-centered care to improve health outcomes.
• Competency 5: Integrate interprofessional care to improve safety and quality and to decrease cost of care.
• Competency 6: Evaluate the ability of existing and emerging information, communication, and health care technologies to improve safety and quality and to decrease cost of care.
• Competency 7: Defend health policy that improves the experience of care, population health, and professional work life while decreasing cost of care.

Note: You will also be assessed on two additional criteria unaligned to a course competency:

• Integrate writing feedback to improve the clarity and quality of the final product.
• Demonstrate completion of hours toward the practicum experience.

Grading Scale:

1-  Lead organizational change to improve the experience of care, population health, and professional work life while decreasing cost of care.
 

Passing Grade:  Leads organizational change to improve the experience of care, population health, and professional work life while decreasing cost of care; identifies knowledge gaps, unknowns, or missing information.
 

2-  Evaluate the best available evidence for use in clinical and organizational decision making.
 

Passing Grade:   Evaluates the best available evidence for use in clinical and organizational decision making, and impartially evaluates the strength of the evidence.
 

3-  Apply quality improvement methods to impact patient, population, and systems outcomes.
 

Passing Grade:  Applies quality improvement methods to impact patient, population, and systems outcomes; identifies areas of uncertainty, knowledge gaps, or additional information that would be needed in order to gain a more complete understanding.
 

4-  Design patient- and population-centered care to improve health outcomes. 

Passing Grade:  Designs patient- and population-centered care to improve health outcomes, identifying assumptions underlying the intervention, implementation, and evaluation plans.
 

5-  Integrate interprofessional care to improve safety and quality and to decrease cost of care.
 

Passing Grade:  Integrates interprofessional care to improve safety and quality, and to decrease cost of care, impartially considering conflicting evidence or other perspectives.

6-  Evaluate the ability of existing and emerging information, communication, and health care technologies to improve safety and quality and to decrease cost.
 

Passing Grade:   Evaluates the ability of existing and emerging information, communication, and health care technologies to improve safety and quality and to decrease cost of care, identifying the criteria used for evaluation.
 

7-   Defend health policy that improves the experience of care, population health, and professional work life while decreasing cost of care.
 

Passing Grade:   Defends and proposes relevant changes to health policy to further improve the experience of care, population health, and professional work life while decreasing cost of care.
 

8-  Integrate writing feedback to improve the clarity and quality of final product.
 

Passing Grade:   Integrates writing feedback to improve the clarity and quality of final product, and leverages the revision process to address areas of missing information.