BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 1
Discussion
DQ1 Assessment of the patient is critical to providing safe,
high quality nursing care. Yet, often we have so many procedures to perform,
medications to administer and other tasks to complete that we do not stop to
critically assess the patient. Consider the following in your discussion:
What assessment processes do you use in your daily nursing
practice?
Are the processes more of a systems checklist or do they
truly involve the synthesis of information that involves reflection and
critical thinking?
How can you reconsider personal habits and cognitive
processes and make sure to include critical thinking in the assessment process?
DQ2 After completing the Critical Thinking Inventory on
pages 341-345, share what you found out about your own critical thinking skills
that relate to ?confidence?, ?intuition?, ?discrimination? and ?predicting?.
Use examples from your nursing practice or experience to discuss how you may be
able to improve your critical thinking.
For example, share how you currently consider specific
assessment data and how you may be able to improve the critical thinking
process to improve patient outcomes and quality of care. Example:
Mr. Jones appears fine, his vital signs are stable, heart
rate is slightly irregular, but he calls the nurse frequently to ask questions
that do not relate to his diagnosis of atrial fibrillation. He seems very
?needy.?
Reflect on the patient, his previous history of heart
problems, considering that his anxiety level may be high due to possible
complications from the atrial fibrillation (stroke) or other issues.
Create an action plan to talk with him about his condition,
his previous experiences with his health care, and answer all questions that he
may have.
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 2
Discussion
Thinking and other cognitive processes such as analysis and
synthesis depend upon many variables, both internal and external. Each person
has learned patterns of thinking that are a result of culture, ethnicity,
education and genetics.
Choose ONE of the following to answer in this discussion
forum:
Discuss a previous experience when you had a disruption in
your own critical thought processes because of a particular situation, anxiety,
or lack of confidence. Explain how you
could overcome the disruption of thinking if you experienced the same situation
today. Specifically, how might you alter your way of thinking when internal
forces or variables confront you?
OR
Discuss a previous experience when you had a disruption in
your own critical thought processes because of external environmental issues
such as societal rules, work environment or a cultural or generational
?disconnect? caused disruption in your critical thinking. How might you handle
this situation differently knowing what you know now?
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 3
Discussion
How does your health care organization assess nursing
competency? Does your organization use a formal tool? Can we observe ?competency?, or can we
measure it in another way? Using the IOM Core competencies as a guide
(Rubenfeld & Scheffer (2015), p. 86), discuss your suggestions for improving
quality and consistency of care through assessing nursing competency in your
work environment.
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 4
Discussion
Discuss strategies that you can use to encourage and support
implementing evidence- based practice and use of nursing outcome indicators in
your current work environment to improve nursing practice and ultimately high
quality, safe patient care?
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 5
Discussion
DQ1 Rubenfeld & Scheffer (2015) suggested that
interdisciplinary teamwork and collaboration involves different communication
styles and can result in conflict that can negatively affect patient care
practices. Previously you discussed how emotions, feelings anxiety and
confidence can affect your ability to think critically. Discuss how you may be able to use conflict
in a positive way to promote interdisciplinary teamwork and collaboration.
DQ2 This week?s readings discuss ?team thinking?. Rubenfeld
& Scheffer (2015) in the 3nd edition of their book discuss Bensimon and
Neumann?s eight roles that people can fulfill in team thinking to make the
?team think? effective.
Bensimon and Neumann identified the following eight team
thinking roles:
1. The definer (voices and creates the team?s reality)
2. The analyst (assesses all of the parts of the issue)
3. The interpreter (provides insight on how team members
perceive outcomes)
4. The critic (redefines, reanalyzes and reinterprets)
5. The synthesizer (elicits all thinking perspectives and
helps provide linkages for solutions)
6. The disparity monitor (assesses how team members perceive
outcomes)
7. The task monitor (removes obstacles to team thinking and
facilitates the teamwork)
8. The emotional monitor (address the human, personal, and
emotional aspects of team thinking during the thinking process.
Choose two of the roles and share an example from your
nursing practice of someone fulfilling the roles.
Why is this role necessary in order for the team thinking
process to go smoothly?
How do other members of the team perceive this person?s
role?
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 6
Discussion
You are a nurse preceptor for a novice nurse from your unit.
Create a scenario from your work experience and develop three questions
reflecting the Critical Thinking Habits of the Mind, (Appendix A, pages 341-
356) that will help you to assess how your mentee is doing. Respond to two
classmates by completing their questions, evaluating the scenario, and
identifying what you learned from their scenario.
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 7
Discussion
Does information technology facilitate or hinder the
practice of assessment? Include one example from personal practice that shows
how technology helped or hindered your patient assessment processes.
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 8
Discussion
DQ1 Nurses have the potential to create change in their
environment and in the profession in general. Discuss a situation in which you
were responsible for or involved in a project that created a change in practice
during your nursing career. Provide the important points that led up to the
change and specific steps detailing how you participated in the change.
Finally, summarize what the results of the change had on the patient
population.
DQ2 Please reflect back through this course. What do believe
is the most significant thing you gained from completing this course? How do
you believe this course has or will impact your own personal nursing practice?
Share any additional insight or thoughts you have had during this course.
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 2 Assignment
1
You will find a discussion of Howard Gardner?s list of
Multiple Intelligences (Rubenfeld & Scheffer, 2015, Box 3-2, p. 61) in the
textbook readings this week. Review the
different categories in the text and write a 2-3-page paper (excluding title
page and reference page) that explains how an experienced nurse can use these
categories to nurture critical thinking and clinical judgment skills in a novice
nurse. In this paper discuss:
the importance of understanding multiple intelligences
four of the types of intelligences from Gardner?s list.
Describe how at least two intelligences relate to your way of thinking and give
examples from your nursing practice.
the positive or negative impact of using multiple
intelligences when mentoring nurses (those with experienced and/or novice
nurses). Include specific examples from your nursing practice/experience.
how to improve the mentoring/learning process using the
concepts of multiple intelligences.
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 3 Assignment
2
You will find a discussion of the ?Core Competencies for a
New Vision for Health Professions Education? in your readings this week
(Rubenfeld & Scheffer, 2015, Box 4-1 p. 86). Review these core competencies
and write a 2-3-page paper (excluding title page and reference page) that
includes:
a discussion of how these core competencies relate to your
particular area of nursing practice.
specific example(s) that describe how your workplace
exemplifies one of the competencies and specific example(s) of how your
workplace can improve meeting another competency.
a chart that visually discusses/shows how you apply the five
core competencies in your particular area of nursing practice that relate to
critical thought and reflective cognitive processes. Be creative! You may add
clipart, photos, multi-media files you have permission to use. Place this chart
as an appendix at the end of the paper, following the reference page.
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 4 Assignment
3
Think back to a critical incident in your workplace that
affected patient safety, had unintended outcomes, or did not contribute to the
well-being of the patient. Reflect on the incident to identify why the
breakdowns in quality and safety occurred.
Refer to Box 5-4, Guidelines for Analyzing CT (Rubenfeld
& Scheffer, 2015, p. 139) in your text to examine an event/incidence, to
synthesize what happened, and how to prevent it in the future.
Write a two to three-page paper (excluding title page and
reference page) that includes:
A description of a critical incident that occurred in your
workplace that had unintended outcomes or did not contribute to the well-being
of the patient.
An analysis of the event using the questions from box 5-4.
Use these questions to analyze the event ? it is not necessary to use all of
them, but the ones that pertain to your event. You can then use the information
from your answers to identify and talk about the incident and what worked well
and what did not.
Your reflection of the incident, what the breakdowns were
and why they occurred.
What steps a leader/manager can take to prevent future
incidents. Or describe how you would create an environment where these
incidences are less likely to happen. For example, what would you do
differently?
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 6 Assignment
4
Choose a population that you believe should use critical
thinking.
Develop a tool, for this specific population, that you can
use to assess or measure the cognitive habits or behaviors that are part of the
critical thinking process that this population uses.
For example ? a novice nurse entering the nursing
profession, an experienced nurse working on a new unit, parents of a child with
a chronic illness, a patient who has a new diagnosis of diabete or heart disease and must learn to
self-manage the disease.
Use Box 2-5 and appendix A to choose which cognitive habits
and behaviors you decide to measure.
The tool should include:
A total of eight questions, each addressing a specific
cognitive habit or behavior.
A rationale for each question ? why that question can
measure that specific cognitive habit or behavior.
Introduce your tool with a discussion of the importance of
cognitive habits or behaviors that encourage critical thinking. Provide a
conclusion to pull the entire assignment together.
Here is an examples of one question you can ask when
assessing the critical thinking skills of minority parents of overweight
children.
Question: How do you feel about your child?s overall health?
Your family?s health?
Rationale: This question is assessing the critical thinking
skill or habit of the mind: contextual perspective. Assessing how the parents
feel about their family?s overall health would give the nurse a view of their
contextual perspective. Parents who are cognizant of their children?s or
overall family?s weight issues, poor eating habits, or lack of exercise can
result in the potential consequences of childhood obesity such as hypertension,
asthma, and diabetes. (Rubenfeld & Scheffer, 2015).
You can also format the tool as a table after you introduce
your paper with an introduction and then finish with a conclusion:
Question
Rationale
How do you feel about your child?s overall health? Your
family?s health?
This question is assessing the critical thinking skill or
habit of the mind: contextual perspective. Assessing how the parents feel about
their family?s overall health would give the nurse a view of their contextual
perspective. Parents who are cognizant of their children?s or overall family?s
weight issues, poor eating habits, or lack of exercise can result in the
potential consequences of childhood obesity such as hypertension, asthma, and
diabetes. (Rubenfeld & Scheffer, 2015).
BSN436 Developing
Nursing Practice
Module 7 Final
Project
Create an audio/visual VoiceThread presentation that will
describe a healthcare education tool for a specific health need of a specific
population that is different than your own.
The presentation should:
identify the population and how it is different than your
own.
discuss the importance of the health need.
identify special learning challenges this population faces.
include a description of the tool to teach the information
and explain how it works.
discuss how the literature supports the use of the
technology you have chosen.
explain how the tool contributes to critical thinking.
explain how the tool contributes to nursing practice and
patient outcomes.
Guidelines
1. Choose a
population that is different than your own. For example: if you are a 25 year
old woman, who is a U.S citizen and only speak English, choose an older male
patient who is from another race, culture, or ethnicity and who speaks limited
English).
Identify the population and how it is different than your
own.
Discuss the importance of the health need. For this
population. For example: there is an
increased incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in the teen population so there
a need for a tool to address this population?s special needs.
Identify special learning challenges this population faces.
For example: income, sensory impairment, or language.
2. Develop a teaching tool: Incorporate
technology/multimedia into your tool. For example: texts, twitter, blogs,
email, YouTube video, video-conferencing, Skype, computer or cell phone app,
electronic brochures, and electronic booklets.
Include a description of the tool to teach the information.
Explain how the tool works but you do not have to actually create the tool. For
example: your tool may be a web site but you do not have to actually create the
site.
3. Discussion:
Discuss how the literature supports the use of the
technology you have chosen.
Explain how the tool contributes to critical thinking ? what
skills does it develops.
Explain how the tool contributes to nursing practice and
patient outcomes.
Important note:
Develop education materials at the sixth grade reading level to ensure
the general population will understand the information. Use this simple readability index calculator
to check any text that you may incorporate into your teaching materials. Just click on the link, and when it opens,
copy and paste an example from your written text to reveal the reading
level. You can also use Microsoft word
to assess the reading level of your writing by selecting review, spelling and
grammar, readability statistics.
Do not include:
A description of the disease process
What the client can expect from the disease
Extraneous information; For example: if you are creating a
tool for patients who have lung cancer do not include statistics about lunch
cancer unless it is part of your tool.