Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

The Dedicated Education Unit: Increasing Capacity And Confidence, Heather Marie Van Housen

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Background: In the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) 2020 annual survey, nursing schools turned away 66,274 entry-level applications to baccalaureate nursing programs in the United States due to a faculty shortage and clinical placement sites (AACN, 2021).

Local Problem: Hospitals need more qualified nurses to meet community needs. The need for clinical faculty and additional clinical placement sites disrupts the workforce pipeline through local nursing schools. A new approach to clinical education is needed to prepare more students for the growing complexities of independent nursing practice.

Methods: Dedicated Education Unit (DEU) implementation to expand pre-licensure nursing student clinical …

Building Excellence Through Shared Governance And Continuous Process Improvement, Deborah Reitter

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Abstract

Background: Nursing shared governance in the hospital setting is a well-established structure for shared decision-making between staff nurses and nurse leaders to improve nursing practice, quality of care, and patient safety. Establishing effective, shared governance can take several years: new skills must be acquired, new behaviors accepted, and new professional commitments made. Newcomers to shared governance require support, education, and the opportunity to acquire requisite skills; otherwise, interest, commitment, and achievement of desired outcomes cannot be sustained.

Local Problem: A large hospital in California established a shared governance structure in 2018. Performance gaps between two high-performing Nursing Unit Councils …

Improving Clinical Communication And Collaboration Through Technology, Michelle Machon

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Problem: Over the last 30 years, clinical communication methodologies in healthcare have evolved to become such disparate systems that they lead to confusion, wasted time, and clinician dissatisfaction. The Joint Commission (2016) reports up to 78% of sentinel events in hospitals are linked to communication failures, which have obvious implications for hospital systems in the quality and safety of their current communication systems.

Context: The purpose of this project was to determine the effectiveness of implementing a unified clinical communication technology platform in an acute care hospital setting and to make recommendations from that implementation to the organization’s larger health …

Workplace Violence: An Urgent Call For Integrated Staff Education In Acute Care Hospitals, Nicole Bellisario

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Problem: Type II workplace violence (WPV) in acute care hospital settings has become an epidemic of costly proportions in the United States. Regulatory mandates and healthcare accreditation standards increasingly require healthcare employers to provide a safe and healthy healing environment for patients and a safe work environment for staff. Implementation of a comprehensive WPV prevention program depends largely on organizational culture, participation and commitment from key stakeholders, and readiness for change.

Context: The patient-clinician relationship has drawn urgent attention, as healthcare organizations around the world implement key components of WPV prevention programs. The clinical management of patient aggression …

Creating A Thriving Informatics Culture, Nicholas Webb

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Nurses thrive best when they are empowered to make decisions that can positively impact healthcare delivery. Knowledge and application of nursing informatics principles can influence clinical, quality, operational, and financial outcomes in ways that were not available in previous professional nursing generations.

If nursing informatics is the solution, what is the problem? A survey regarding use and attitudes about nursing informatics was taken of chief nurse executives (CNEs) at an integrated, not for profit healthcare system in the Northern California region, where the author oversees the electronic health record (EHR). The results were surprising. Half said they did not know …

Increasing Utilization Of Motivational Interviewing To Promote Pediatric Oral Health, Ulyses Reamico

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Prevalence of early childhood caries (ECC) remains high even in developed countries such as the United States. An interprofessional education (IPE) project between University of San Francisco (USF) School of Nursing and Health Professions and the University of the Pacific (UoP), Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry was initiated four years ago to enhance nurse practitioner (NP) and dental students’ pediatric oral-systemic health assessment and health promotion communication skills. Since then, USF NP students received pediatric oral health assessment training and spent clinical rotations at UoP to provide pediatric oral care alongside dental students. This doctor of nursing (DNP) project …

Increasing Nursing Policy And Advocacy Engagement, Marketa Houskova

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

At present, professional nursing does not benefit from strong policy development and advocacy influence in the United States. This project focused on CA nursing policy development and advocacy influence deficit among new members of a statewide professional nursing association. There are nearly 457,000 licensed registered nurses (RNs) in CA (BRN, 2019) and around 3.8 million RNs in the United States (AACN, 2019) making CA RNs twelve percent of the national nursing workforce. Yet only five percent of RNs serve on hospital boards, and legislative efforts to advance important nursing issues such as full practice authority for advanced practice RNs in …

Transforming Nursing Preceptors By Developing Emotional Intelligence, Michael Francis

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Changing the process of professionally developing nursing preceptors to meet the growing and changing needs of the nursing profession is critical. This evidence-based project leveraged an advanced preceptor education program for inclusion of basic emotional intelligence tenets and transitioning them into preceptor self-awareness, leadership recognition, and return on human capital investment. A large integrated healthcare system in Northern California identified a strategic need for preceptor development and within the system two acute care hospitals and one home health/hospice agency were selected to participate. The intervention included the development of a six-hour curriculum delivered through an interactive and innovative in-person learning …

Business Intelligence Competencies: Making Healthcare Data Come Alive, Christina Bivona-Tellez

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Business Intelligence Competencies: Making Healthcare Data Come Alive While a wealth of healthcare related data exists, nurse leaders (NL) have yet to understand its implications and adopt analytical skills to lead in the transformation of care delivery. Information science is at a new frontier for nursing to embrace. It is critical for nursing leadership to advance and support business intelligence (BI) and interactive data visualization (IDV) skills across the organization and advocate for greater engagement of nurses in health system decision making. With these new tools and competencies, nursing and other health professions can innovate best practices, providing enhanced quality, …

Utilizing Tiger Competencies To Improve Informatics Practice, Kwun Ying M. Fung

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Nursing Informatics (NI) is quickly becoming an essential part of nursing. From the classroom, to the bedside, and to the boardroom, nurses across the nursing continuum are expected to use NI in their practice with the hopes of delivering better quality care to their patients. However, the training and education of NI provided to all levels of nurses is unable to keep up with the pace of technology. This project seeks to improve the NI competency of the nursing workforce at a pediatric hospital through an educational course using NI competencies identified by the Technology Informatics Guiding Educational Reform (TIGER) …

The Creation And Implementation Of A Transgender Cultural Competence Nursing Education Toolkit, James Bl Donovan

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Healthcare disparities in the transgender populations have been linked to lack of healthcare provider cultural competence (IOM, 2011; Bradford et al., Harbin et al., 2012; Eliason, Dibble, & DeJoseph, 2010; Lim, Brown, & Jones, 2013). Prior research has identified that healthcare providers receive little, if any, transgender cultural competence training during their formal education. A survey of nursing educators at the University of San Francisco School (USF) of Nursing and Health Professions suggested that few educators are providing transgender content or understand the unique healthcare needs of that population. A literature review concluded that little is known about the best …

Adoption Of Innovation: Impact Of Rituximab (Rituxan®) Faster Infusion On Oncology Nurses' Perceptions, Practice, And Resource Utilization, Keith Dawson

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

The translation of advances in clinical research into clinical practice in a manner that provides benefits while reducing potential harm is a challenge within the health care delivery system. Data from a phase III multicenter clinical trial led to the 2012 US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a 90-minute infusion of rituximab (Rituxan) starting at Cycle 2 for patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma who did not experience a Grade 3 or 4 infusion-related adverse event during Cycle 1. The 90-minute rituximab faster infusion will result in a significant change in how nurses in the United States have been administering …