NUR 8000 Module 6 Scholarship Paper: A Five-Year Plan for a DNP Nurse Leader Example

After the Project: A Five-Year Scholarship and Development Plan for a DNP Leader on a Cardiac Step-Down Unit

Student Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice, Thomas Edison State University

NUR-8000: DNP Role Development

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

After the Project: A Five-Year Scholarship and Development Plan for a DNP Leader on a Cardiac Step-Down Unit

Beyond the Final Project

A DNP degree ends with a project, and many graduates treat the project as the end of their scholarship. If the role I defined in the first module, a translator of evidence into systems, is to mean anything, my scholarship has to continue after graduation, in the form of improvements that are measured and shared. What follows is my plan for the five years after graduation: a project, its dissemination, the partners I need and my own growth as a leader, each with a yearly measure.

The Contested DNP Project

The project is the most visible product of DNP education, and it is also the most debated. Dols et al. (2017) surveyed 90 DNP program directors across the United States. Almost nine in ten said their faculty were at least somewhat unhappy with how the final project worked. Contributing factors included faculty unfamiliarity with evidence-based practice and quality improvement methods, a lack of agreement on what the project should be, limited resources, difficulty securing clinical sites and weak scholarly writing among students. McCauley et al. (2020), writing from the perspective of deans, linked such inconsistency to the broader difficulty of establishing the DNP as a clear and valued degree.

These critiques shape my choices. A project that is small, poorly measured and never shared confirms the doubts. A project that addresses a real problem, uses a rigorous improvement design, involves partners and is disseminated helps answer them.

Choosing the Project

My project will address alarm fatigue through indication-based telemetry on my unit, the question I began to explore with the Iowa Model in the third module. The topic meets three tests. It is a real and measured problem on my unit, with hundreds of alarms per patient-day and slow response times. It has evidence sufficient to support a change. And monthly alarm counts, monitor days and any missed rhythms can be plotted as an interrupted time series rather than one year set against another. The project's partners will be the cardiology section, the monitor technicians and the clinical engineering department, which owns the alarm data.

The project also answers the specific weaknesses the program directors named. It uses a quality improvement design that my faculty mentor and my PhD partner both understand, so the methods are not a source of disagreement. Its site is my own unit, so access is secure. Its resources are modest: alarm data that clinical engineering already collects, a revised order set and staff education. And its scope is defined in advance, so it cannot grow into the sprawling project that leaves students and faculty frustrated.

Partnership With a PhD Scientist

Trautman et al. (2018) describe the strongest translational work as a partnership in which PhD-prepared nurses lead discovery and rigorous evaluation and DNP-prepared nurses lead implementation in practice. A university nurse researcher who works on alarm safety has been asked to advise on the design and the statistics. In return, my unit can offer her a setting for future studies. The partnership will extend beyond the project: a shared goal is a multisite evaluation of indication-based telemetry across our health system's three hospitals in years three and four.

Dissemination

Scholarship that is not shared does not change practice elsewhere. I will disseminate the project in three ways. First, inside my hospital, through the nursing quality council and a presentation to the cardiology section, so that the change can spread to other units. Second, regionally, through a poster at a state nursing conference in the year after graduation. Third, nationally, through a manuscript written to the SQUIRE guidelines and submitted to a nursing quality journal within 18 months of completion. Dols et al. (2017) named scholarly writing as a frequent weakness, so I will join a writing group in my final year and ask my PhD partner to review the manuscript.

Developing as a Leader

The plan includes my own development. I will pursue certification as a nurse executive in year two, take on leadership of the hospital's alarm management committee in year three and mentor two staff nurses through their own improvement projects in year four. These steps move my influence from one unit toward the system level that my DNP concentration names, and they build the next generation of nurses who lead inquiry.

Each step is chosen because it creates a new place to use the skills of the degree. Certification signals executive competence to the people who appoint system leaders. Committee leadership gives me authority to spread a change beyond my unit. Mentoring staff projects multiplies the inquiry I began, so that the unit's scholarship continues even if I move on.

What Could Go Wrong

I can see three ways this plan could stall. Operational demands may consume the time protected for scholarship; I will negotiate scholarly time with my chief nursing officer as part of my role description. The project may not show a clear effect; the interrupted time series design and process measures will still allow me to report what happened and why. The partnership may lapse if the scientist moves; building relationships with more than one researcher reduces that risk.

Conclusion

The DNP project is contested, and the degree's value depends on what graduates do with it. My plan answers that challenge with a rigorous project on a real problem, a partnership with a PhD scientist, three levels of dissemination and a development path toward system-level leadership, each with yearly measures. In five years I want to be able to show, not only state, what the practice doctorate added.

References

Dols, J. D., Hernández, C., & Miles, H. (2017). The DNP project: Quandaries for nursing scholars. Nursing Outlook, 65(1), 84-93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2016.07.009

McCauley, L. A., Broome, M. E., Frazier, L., Hayes, R., Kurth, A., Musil, C. M., Norman, L. D., Rideout, K. H., & Villarruel, A. M. (2020). Doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degree in the United States: Reflecting, readjusting, and getting back on track. Nursing Outlook, 68(4), 494-503. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2020.03.008

Trautman, D. E., Idzik, S., Hammersla, M., & Rosseter, R. (2018). Advancing scholarship through translational research: The role of PhD and DNP prepared nurses. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 23(2), Manuscript 2. https://doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol23No02Man02