In a 5-7 page written assessment, define the patient, family, or population health problem that will be the focus of your capstone project. Assess the problem from a leadership, collaboration, communication, change management, and policy perspective. Plan to spend approximately 2 direct practicum hours meeting with a patient, family, or group of your choice to explore the problem and, if desired, consulting with subject matter and industry experts.Nurses in all professional roles work to effect positive patient outcomes and improve organizational processes. Professional nurses are leaders in problem identification, planning, and strategy implementation—skills that directly affect patient care or organizational effectiveness.Too often, change agents jump to a conclusion that an intervention will promote the envisioned improvement. Instead, the ideal approach is to determine which interventions are appropriate, based on an assessment and review of credible evidence. Interventions could be patient-facing or involve a change in policy and process. In this assessment, you’ll identify and make the case for your practicum focus area, then explore it in depth from a leadership, collaboration, communication, change management, and policy perspective.This assessment lays the foundation for the work that will carry you through your capstone experience and guide the practicum hours needed to complete the work in this course. In addition, it will enable you to do the following:Develop a problem statement for a patient, family, or population that’s relevant to your practice.Begin building a body of evidence that will inform your approach to your practicum.Focus on the influence of leadership, collaboration, communication, change management, and policy on the problem.Demonstration of ProficiencyBy successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following assessment scoring guide criteria:Competency 1: Lead people and processes to improve patient, systems, and population outcomes.Define a patient, family, or population health problem that’s relevant to personal and professional practice.Competency 2: Make clinical and operational decisions based upon the best available evidence.Analyze evidence from peer-reviewed literature and professional sources that describes and guides nursing actions related to a defined patient, family, or population problem.Competency 5: Analyze the impact of health policy on quality and cost of care.Explain how state board nursing practice standards and/or organizational or governmental policies could affect a defined patient, family, or population problem.Competency 7: Implement patient-centered care to improve quality of care and the patient experience.Propose leadership strategies to improve outcomes, patient-centered care, and the patient experience related to a defined patient, family, or population problem.Competency 8: Integrate professional standards and values into practice.Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions.Apply APA style and formatting to scholarly writing.PreparationIn this assessment, you’ll assess the patient, family, or population health problem that will be the focus of your capstone project. Plan to spend approximately 2 hours working with a patient, family, or group of your choice to explore the problem from a leadership, collaboration, communication, change management, and policy perspective. During this time, you may also choose to consult with subject matter and industry experts about the problem (for example, directors of quality or patient safety, nurse managers/directors, physicians, and epidemiologists).To prepare for the assessment, complete the following:Identify the patient, family, or group you want to work with during your practicum The patient you select can be a friend or a family member. You’ll work with this patient, family, or group throughout your capstone project, focusing on a specific health care problem.Begin surveying the scholarly and professional literature to establish your evidence and research base, inform your assessment, and meet scholarly expectations for supporting evidence.In addition, you may wish to complete the following:Review the assessment instructions and scoring guide to ensure that you understand the work you’ll be asked to complete and how it will be assessed.Review the Practicum Focus Sheet: Assessment 1 [PDF], which provides guidance for conducting this portion of your practicum.Note: Remember that you can submit all, or a portion of, your draft assessment to Smarthinking Tutoring for feedback, before you submit the final version for this assessment. If you plan on using this free service, be mindful of the turnaround time of 24–48 hours for receiving feedback.InstructionsComplete this assessment in two parts.Part 1Define the patient, family, or population health problem that will be the focus of your capstone project. Assess the problem from a leadership, collaboration, communication, change management, and policy perspective and establish your evidence and research base to plan, implement, and share findings related to your project.Part 2Connect with the patient, family, or group you’ll work with during your practicum. During this portion of your practicum, plan to spend at least 2 hours meeting with the patient, family, or group and, if desired, consulting with subject matter and industry experts of your choice. The hours you spend meeting with them should take place outside of regular work hours. Use the Practicum Focus Sheet [PDF] provided for this assessment to guide your work and interpersonal interactions.CORE ELMSComplete the NURS-FPX4900 Volunteer Experience Form in CORE ELMS. Include a description of your relationship to the patient, family, or group in the Volunteer Experience comments field.RequirementsThe assessment requirements, outlined below, correspond to the scoring guide criteria, so be sure to address each main point. Read the performance-level descriptions 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.Define a patient, family, or population health problem that’s relevant to your practice.Summarize the problem you’ll explore.Identify the patient, family, or group you intend to work with during your practicum.Provide context, data, or information that substantiates the presence of the problem and its significance and relevance to the patient, family, or population.Explain why this problem is relevant to your practice as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse.Analyze evidence from peer-reviewed literature and professional sources that describes and guides nursing actions related to the patient, family, or population problem you’ve defined.Note whether the authors provide supporting evidence from the literature that’s consistent with what you see in your nursing practice.Explain how you would know if the data are unreliable.Describe what the literature says about barriers to the implementation of evidence-based practice in addressing the problem you’ve defined.Describe research that has tested the effectiveness of nursing standards and/or policies in improving patient, family, or population outcomes for this problem.Describe current literature on the role of nurses in policy making to improve outcomes, prevent illness, and reduce hospital readmissions.Describe what the literature says about a nursing theory or conceptual framework that might frame and guide your actions during your clinical practicum.Explain how state board nursing practice standards and/or organizational or governmental policies could affect the patient, family, or population problem you’ve defined.Describe research that has tested the effectiveness of these standards and/or policies in improving patient, family, or population outcomes for this problem.Describe current literature on the role of nurses in policy making to improve outcomes, prevent illness, and reduce hospital readmissions.Describe the effects of local, state, and federal policies or legislation on your nursing scope of practice, within the context of this problem.Propose leadership strategies to improve outcomes, patient-centered care, and the patient experience related to the patient, family, or population problem you’ve defined.Discuss research on the effectiveness of leadership strategies.Define the role that you anticipate leadership must play in addressing the problem.Describe collaboration and communication strategies that you anticipate will be needed to address the problem.Describe the change management strategies that you anticipate will be required to address the problem.Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions.Apply APA style and formatting to scholarly writing.Additional RequirementsFormat: Format your paper using APA style. Use the APA Style Paper Template. An APA Style Paper Tutorial is also provided to help you in writing and formatting your paper. Be sure to include:A title page and reference page. An abstract is not required.A running head on all pages.Appropriate section headings.Length: Your paper should be approximately 5–7 pages in length, not including the reference page.Supporting evidence: Cite at least five 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.

Assessment #3 Instructions: PICO(T) Questions and an Evidence- Based Approach. Create a 3-5-page submission in which you develop a PICO(T) question for a specific care issue and evaluate the evidence you locate, which could help to answer the question.PICO(T) is an acronym that helps researchers and practitioners define aspects of a potential study or investigation. It stands for: P – Patient/population/problem. I – Intervention. C – Comparison (of potential interventions, typically). O - Outcome(s). T - Time frame (if time frame is relevant). The end goal of applying PICO(T) is to develop a question that can help guide the search for evidence (Boswell & Cannon, 2015). From this perspective, a PICO(T) question can be a valuable starting point for nurses who are starting to apply an evidence-based model or EBPs. By taking the time to precisely define the areas in which the nurse will be looking for evidence, searches become more efficient and effective. Essentially, by precisely defining the types of evidence within specific areas, the nurse will be more likely to discover relevant and useful evidence during their search.You are encouraged to complete the Vila Health PCI(T) Process activity before you develop the plan proposal. This activity offers an opportunity to practice working through creating a PICO(T) question within the context of an issue at a Vila Health facility. These skills will be necessary to complete Assessment 3 successfully. This is for your own practice and self-assessment and demonstrates your engagement in the course.Demonstration of Proficiency By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following assessment scoring guide criteria: Reference Boswell, C., & Cannon, S. (2015). Introduction to nursing research. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.Professional Context As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, you will be responsible for locating and identifying credible and scholarly resources to incorporate the best available evidence for the purposes of enhancing clinical reasoning and judgement skills. When reliable and relevant evidence-based findings are utilized, patients, health care systems, and nursing practice outcomes are positively impacted.PICO(T) is a framework that can help you structure your definition of the issue, potential approach that you are going to use, and your predictions related the issue. Word choice is important in the PICO(T) process because different word choices for similar concepts will lead you toward different existing evidence and research studies that would help inform the development of your initial question.Scenario For this assessment, please use an issue of interest from your current or past nursing practice.If you do not have an issue of interest from your personal nursing practice, then review the optional Case Studies presented in the resources and select one of those as the basis for your assessment.Instructions For this assessment, select an issue of interest an apply the PICO(T) process to define the question and research it.Your initial goal is to define the population, intervention, comparison, and outcome. In some cases, a time frame is relevant and you should include that as well, when writing a question you can research related to your issue of interest. After you define your question, research it, and organize your initial findings, select the two sources of evidence that seem the most relevant to your question and analyze them in more depth. Specifically, interpret each source's specific findings and best practices related to your issues, as well explain how the evidence would help you plan and make decisions related to your question.If you need some structure to organize your initial thoughts and research, the PICOT Question and Research Template document (accessible from the "Create PICO(T) Questions" page in the Capella library's Evidence Based Practice guide) might be helpful.In your submission, make sure you address the following grading criteria: Define a practice issue to be explored via a PICO(T) approach. Identify sources of evidence that could be potentially effective in answering a PICO(T) question. Explain the findings from articles or other sources of evidence. Explain the relevance of the findings from chosen sources of evidence to making decision related to a PICO(T) question. Communicate using writing that is clear, logical, and professional with correct grammar and spelling using current APA style. Example Assessment: You may use the following to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like: