Quality Improvement Initiative
Quality Improvement (QI) Initiative Project Description: You are an advanced practice nurse (APN) leader at a local non-profit community hospital, St. Mary’s General Hospital (this is a created hospital system and not meant to be associated with any real hospital system). You have been approached by your Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) as a leader to create and develop a hospital-wide initiative promoting Quality Improvement among nurses. This paper will focus on implementing a hospital wide QI initiative. Please follow the specific grading rubric below as this outline how you will be graded. The first section generally outlines the assignment and may provide some additional guidance on points that need additional clarification for the student above what is described in the grading rubric.
Develop a hospital-wide initiative that promotes QIengagement and skill development by nurses. The nurse leader is expected to befamiliar with QI process and what is needed to ensure successful engagement bynurses within the facility. This assignment requires that students be familiarwith concepts that have been introduced at the undergraduate level such asquality improvement and leadership styles and approaches. The difference at thegraduate level is active engagement in learning rather than passive learning andwill require the student to evaluate, analyze and develop the concepts learnedat the undergraduate level. The introduction and conclusion sections areclearly outlined in the grading rubric below (refer to the grading rubric).Each section of the paper is expected to be well supported by the literature,evidence, best practice and research. This means that students are expected tointegrate multiple literature sources and not rely on one source to inform themajority or even a large part of the paper. Minimally the paper should includeat least 12 references but will likely include more. I check references soplease make sure that the references align and are actually used to support thestatements and viewpoints that you are making in the paper otherwise they failto be ‘supporting’ evidence to back these statements and are therefore opinionand have no place in an academic graduate level paper.
Few key points.
Review and follow the grading rubric andmake sure that you are meeting each of the points outlined in the gradingrubric; failure to do so results in lower grade. The vaguer and morenon-specific the student is in the paper the lower the grade. The reason forthis is that vagueness suggests failure to understand the concept in the paper.Clear and detailed is not synonymous with lengthy, actually detailed andsuccinct is the preferable approach because being both too brief and failing toprovide an adequate understanding of the concepts will suggest lack ofunderstanding and too lengthy and writing as much as possible hoping that youhit upon something that matches the grading rubric criteria is also failure tounderstand the concepts. Do not submit vague and nonspecific information oryour grade will reflect failure to demonstrate understanding. Failure to followthe grading rubric will result in a non-passing grade and you have 1opportunity to submit assignments in this class, refer to the syllabus forgrading policy and submissions guidelines.
For instance, the background and significancesection outline clearly the following in the grading rubric: Identifiesand describes quality improvement (QI); its importance to healthcarefacilities, patients, and stakeholders. How this links QI to all levels ofnursing practice and specifically it’s importance to nurse leaders. What is thefirst step the nurse leader needs to take to fulfill the task assigned by theCNO with a detailed rationale that provides information about the specifictools and measures, interpretation, and application of the findings to guidethe nurse leader’s decision making about the QI initiative. This suggeststhat you are looking for a specific first step that involves a tool or measure,so that is hinting and suggesting the student should be familiar with how QI knowledge,skills and engagement are determined by a nurse leader.
St. Mary’s General Hospital Mission, Vision &Strategic Development Plan are provided for you along with this assignmentin Blackboard under the Assignments Tab. Please make sure that you are usingthe provided document to complete the assignment when the syllabus asks thatyou align the QI initiative with St. Mary’s mission, vision and strategic plan.
This assignment is to be submitted as an essay- with an introduction, questions developed at the graduate level, and a conclusion to summarize and synthesize key points. APA must be strictly followed. The page requirement for this project will be a MINIMUM of 10 pages not counting references and the cover page.
