A Practicing RN-BSN

As a practicing RN-BSN, you will be expected to bring clinical expertise to your work and take on a leadership role in continually improving patient care. Your change proposal should be geared toward convincing an audience of administrative decision-makers that change is needed and that your plan is desirable and viable. It should clearly and concisely lay out the problem you are seeking to address and suggest specific evidence-based changes, including a plan for implementing and evaluating those changes. You should also specify and approximate a timeframe for carrying out your plan and the resources you will need. (Note: You do not need to actually implement the change and evaluate it, just create a plan for how you would do so.)

Remember that in order for your proposal to gain support, it will need to be succinct, clear, and well-supported throughout by credible research and evidence.

Your proposal should contain the following sections:

1. Introduction
   1. Identify a professional practice issue of local, state, or national importance for which you can act as a change agent.
   2. Discuss the background and significance of the problem to nursing. Be sure to substantiate your claims with specific examples from research.
2. Justification of Practice Change Recommendation
   1. Provide a scholarly summary of the research reviewed.
   2. Identify the expected outcome from the practice change recommendation.
3. Pre-Implementation Plan
   1. Identify a specific change theory that will assist you with planning stages of your change proposal
   2. Identify activities needed prior to implementing your change, making theory-to-practice connections with each key element and impact of change to the element
   3. Discuss a plan for activities needed to leverage this element to promote change and identify the stakeholders that may be involved in these activities. The activities you propose must cover multiple aspects of health practice surrounding the problem, including but not limited to:
      1. Patient and Nurse Safety
      2. Information Management Systems
      3. Health Literacy
      4. Administrative Policies
      5. Ethical Considerations (i.e., equity of access and treatment, etc.)
4. Implementation Plan
   1. Assess the factors that are likely to affect the implementation of your recommended activities
   2. Identify evidence-based rationales to propose how you will address them, incorporating your identified change theory. Your plan should encompass the following with evidence to support your rationale:
      1. Technological challenges
      2. Institutional structures
      3. Strategies for building buy-in among different stakeholders, including nurses
      4. Financial trends and anticipation of the availability of human resource and project funding
      5. Hospital or governmental policy constraints
      6. Regulatory requirements
      7. Patient diversity

A Practicing RN-BSN

1. Evaluation plan:
   1. Propose steps for evaluating your suggested changes based on your change theory and evidence on existing best practices. Include the indicators that you will use to measure success, both in implementing the change itself and in ensuring quality outcomes for diverse patients.
   2. Identify appropriate benchmarks from which to measure the effectiveness of the change.
   3. Discuss the processes you will use for gathering feedback from relevant stakeholders—including nurses, patients, and their families—on what is and is not working in order to support continuous improvement.
2. Time and resource allocation:
   1. Give an approximate timeframe for the different stages and activities in your proposal
   2. Estimate the human and other resources that will be needed to carry out your proposal. You do not need to include specific dollar amounts, but you should anticipate what each activity requires in terms of resources in general terms. For example, you might need a certain number of full- or part-time staff or the services of a contracted firm, specific software, hospital supplies, laptops, publicity materials, and so forth. You may find it useful to use an Excel spreadsheet or other table for presenting this information.
3. Conclusion
   1. Summarize the proposed change, its significance, and expected outcomes as a result of implementing the proposed change.

   2. What to Submit

      Your change proposal should include a title page and table of contents and should conform to the latest APA writing conventions and citations. It should be approximately 10–15 pages, not including the reference list or optional appendices, double-spaced, and in 12-point Times New Roman font. Your references must include at least 3 primary research articles from peer-reviewed nursing sources. You may include optional illustrations, photographs, graphs and charts, and other non-textual materials as needed to support your proposal.

      Capstone Project Rubric

      Course Outcome	Progress Toward Meeting the Outcome	Value
      Apply skills in using patient care technologies, information systems, and clinical decision support tools to promote safe nursing practice and quality patient outcomes	Emerging (100%)	Not Evident (0%)	17
      Utilize evidence-based practice in planning, implementing, and evaluating outcomes of care	Emerging (100%)	Not Evident (0%)	17
      Formulate strategies to promote health and prevent disease in individuals and populations across the life span	Emerging (100%)	Not Evident (0%)	17
      Implement patient safety and quality initiatives within the complex clinical microsystem using leadership and communication skills	Emerging (100%)	Not Evident (0%)	16
      Analyze trends in healthcare policy, finance, and regulatory environments and their implications for healthcare access, equity, and affordability	Emerging (100%)	Not Evident (0%)	17
      Evaluate life-long learning and nursing engagement to promote personal and professional transformation	Emerging (100%)	Not Evident (0%)	16
      Total:	100%