Nursing Week 1 Assignment: Begin Part 1 of Quality Benchmark Project

NUR415: POLICY FINANCY & QUALITY 1

Quality Benchmark Project: Description & Due Dates, Broad Overview

Research & Decide. Choose and begin researching a significant quality issue. It can be anything that you believe is vital to patient safety and/or improving overall quality of care. Reliable research needs to be less than 5 years old ideally. The best research are peer-reviewed journal articles, or are written by respectable organizations and expert professionals.

Some topic examples may include:

· Hand hygiene, to include nosocomial infections driving healthcare costs

· Medication errors, to include transcription errors or staffing issues. How does fixed hospital budgets fit in?

· Patient falls, to include alarm fatigue or short hospital stays – Who pays the cost if a patient falls while in the hospital?

· Bed sores acquired in the hospital. Who pays if the patient gets a bed sore while at the hospital?

· Misdiagnosis and how that affects short and long-term patient care. How does that affect healthcare costs?

· Issues with patient identification – may tie into treatment errors and billing issues.

· Documentation quality and how it negatively affects reimbursement and drives hospital costs.

· Budget costs limiting up-to-date technology or research-based interventions from being implemented.

· Inter-departmental communication, to include nursing triage and efficient, safe decision-making. Consider if this is an effective use of time management and how it can be improved.

· Staffing ratios – is it really a nursing shortage or just budgetary restrictions? How does this negatively affect quality of care, nursing retention and hospital costs long-term? How does it affect patient and staff satisfaction?

· Integrating mental health into medical. When a patient comes in for a heart transplant, for example, we need to consider depression and anxiety – quality of life issues after discharge, psychosocial issues etc. Dissolve the current system of medical focusing on medical and psych focusing on psych and merge the two for a comprehensive patient overview.

· Managing health care costs and chronic disease. Consider cost of prevention to keep acute from becoming chronic and long-term benefit to our society.

Week 2: Quality Benchmark Project, Part 1 Due. “The Proposal” is a minimum of 2-pages, not including title page and reference page. Written in APA format – must follow sample paper provided or you will get it returned to try again. Late penalties may apply.

Title Page – Use Required Professional Paper Template, 7th ed . for this course project. It is located under the module part of the classroom.

Introduction Paragraph: Why is this issue important and introduce research. What will I learn by reading your paper? Minimum 5 sentences, not to exceed half of first page.

Body of Paper: The body of your paper is where you present your reliable research mixed with your professional opinion. Each paragraph should be minimum of 5 sentences.

*Required: Use paragraph headers to organize each section of body content. See template given for a visual of paragraph headers.

· Body – Research the background of your topic, and discuss why you believe it is significant to health care today.

· Body – Research and examine previous attempts to address this quality issue. Why did it succeed or fail and why do we need to continue to address it today.

You do not need a conclusion for Part 1, as Part 2 will be added to this project as you continue your paper. Part 3 will have your conclusion and end this project.

Week 5: Quality Benchmark Project, Part 2 Due. An additional 2-pages added to Part 1 for a total of 4(+) pages. Make sure to include instructor corrections to Part 1 to improve Part 2 prior to submission.

*Required: Continue to use paragraph headers to organize each section of body content.

· Body – Research and discuss who has jurisdiction over your quality issue – who has control to make change?

· Body – Who are the stakeholders, investors or decision-makers in this issue and how do they influence this issue?

· Body – What resources do you believe are needed to promote change in this quality issue toward improvement?

Week 9: Quality Benchmark Project, Part 3 Due. An additional 2-pages added to Part 1 & Part 2 for a total of 6(+) pages. Make sure to include instructor corrections to Parts 1 & 2 to improve Part 3 prior to submission.

*Required: Continue to use paragraph headers to organize each section of body content.

· Body – Research and discuss public policy or regulatory procedures that have already addressed this issue.

· Body – How does this quality issue negatively or positively affect nursing and nursing practice?

· Body – Potential barriers to implementation?

· Conclusion – No new information introduced in conclusion. Tie up all the main points and leave reader in awe of your awesomeness. 🙂

Note: I hope this helps make more sense and organize this project. If you have any questions, or want to see if your topic fits this assignment, please reach out. It should be a broad topic, not necessarily a specific disease issue or an ethical issue it’s a quality issue. Remember, this is a policy, quality and finance class – not patho or nursing ethics!

Have fun with this assignment – I look forward to reading your research!