Practicum Focus Sheet
Assignment 2
Note: Expect to spend at least 2 hours with the patient, family, or group you’ll be working with
during this portion of your practicum, exploring issues of patient safety, quality, and costs
associated with the health problem you’ve defined. This includes time spent in consultation with
subject matter or industry experts. You’ll report on the results of this work as part of your next
assessment.
For this portion of your practicum, discuss, in depth, how the problem will affect patient safety,
quality of care, and costs. Consider the following questions to help guide your exploration of
quality, safety, and costs and to make the most of your time:
• Has the patient, family or group experienced any serious safety events because of the
problem?
• How many times have they gone to the emergency department (ED)?
• How many times have they been hospitalized?
• What is the frequency of ED visits or hospitalizations?
• How many medications are needed to manage the problem?
• Does insurance pay for these medications?
• Have the medications caused any side effects?
• How often are doctors’ visits or other therapies needed?
• Does insurance pay for these visits or treatments?
Part 2
(co-workers family; this is a fictional person, but it has inline with previous paper and not seem like a fictional person)
Whom did you meet with?
What did you learn from them?
Comment on the evidence-based practice (EBP) documents or websites you reviewed.
What did you learn from that review?
Share the process and experience of exploring the influence of leadership, collaboration, communication, change management, and policy on the problem.
What barriers, if any, did you encounter when presenting the problem to the patient, family, or group?
Did the patient, family, or group agree with you about the presence of the problem and its significance and relevance?
What leadership, communication, collaboration, or change management skills did you employ during your interactions to overcome these barriers or change the patient’s, family’s, or group’s thinking about the problem (for example, creating a sense of urgency based on data or policy requirements)?
What changes, if any, did you make to your definition of the problem, based on your discussions?
What might you have done differently?
The assignment requirements, outlined below, correspond to the scoring guide criteria, so be sure to address each main point. Read the performance-level descriiptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed. In addition, note the additional requirements for document format and length and for supporting evidence.
Explain how the patient, family, or population problem impacts the quality of care, patient safety, and costs to the system and individual.
Cite evidence that supports the stated impact.
Note whether the supporting evidence is consistent with what you see in your nursing practice.
Explain how state board nursing practice standards and/or organizational or governmental policies can affect the problem’s impact on the quality of care, patient safety, and costs to the system and individual.
Describe research that has tested the effectiveness of these standards and/or policies in addressing care quality, patient safety, and costs to the system and individual.
Explain how these standards and/or policies will guide your actions in addressing care quality, patient safety, and costs to the system and individual.
Describe the effects of local, state, and federal policies or legislation on your nursing scope of practice, within the context of care quality, patient safety, and cost to the system and individual.
Propose strategies to improve the quality of care, enhance patient safety, and reduce costs to the system and individual.
Discuss research on the effectiveness of these strategies in addressing care quality, patient safety, and costs to the system and individual.
Identify relevant and available sources of benchmark data on care quality, patient safety, and costs to the system and individual.
Use paraphrasing and summarization to represent ideas from external sources.
Apply APA style and formatting to scholarly writing.
Supporting evidence: Cite at least 5 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your central ideas. Resources should be no more than five years old. Provide in-text citations and references in APA format.
Proofreading: Proofread your paper, before you submit it, to minimize errors that could distract readers and make it more difficult for them to focus on its substance.
