NUR 303 Module 4 Project One Service-Learning Plan Example

Project One: A Service-Learning Plan for the Eastgate Wash-Day Health Table

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

NUR 303: Service Learning and Civic Engagement

Project One

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Project One: A Service-Learning Plan for the Eastgate Wash-Day Health Table

Both partners, the laundromat's owner and the neighborhood association, accepted a proposal that described a monthly health table where neighbors could have their blood pressure checked and get help with health paperwork while their laundry ran. The community assessment then showed that the neighborhood's clearest gap for this project is weekend access to care, and that its strongest assets are trusted local people and informal gathering places. This plan turns those two documents into a six-month project with objectives the partners can measure, activities that stay inside nursing scope and a route for the work to continue after the course ends. The laundromat, the association and the people named are composites.

Goal and Objectives

The overall goal is to give laundromat customers a trusted, low-barrier place to check their blood pressure, understand health paperwork and connect to care and community services on weekends. Table 1 sets out four objectives, each with a measure and a person responsible for tracking it. The targets are modest on purpose. A three-hour table once a month cannot change blood pressure in a neighborhood, but it can reach people, make referrals and show the partners whether the idea is worth keeping.

Table 1

Objectives, Measures and Targets for the Wash-Day Health Table

Note. Targets were agreed with the partners and are intended for the partners' decision at six months, not as research outcomes.

Activities

Blood pressure checks will follow the measurement steps that Muntner et al. (2019) set out for the American Heart Association: the person sits with back supported and feet flat for several minutes before the reading, the arm rests at heart level on the table, the cuff is sized to the arm, and neither the person nor the nurse talks during the reading. A laundromat is noisy and busy, so the table will sit in the quietest corner near the front window, and each person will get two readings about a minute apart, with the average written on the card. Every card will explain that a single reading is a starting point and will list the health center's address and hours.

Paperwork help will use teach-back, in which the nurse explains a document and then asks the person to say in their own words what it means and what they will do next. A systematic review by Talevski et al. (2020) reported benefit from teach-back in nearly every one of the twenty studies it included across a wide range of settings and outcomes, although the studies were heterogeneous and implementation strategies were rarely reported. At the table, teach-back will be used for prescription labels, appointment letters and insurance notices, which the outreach coordinator identified as the most common requests.

Scope and Ethics

The nurse will measure blood pressure, explain readings and documents, give written referrals and encourage follow-up. The nurse will not diagnose, prescribe, adjust medication, interpret laboratory results in detail or advise anyone to stop a medicine. A written escalation plan will sit in the supply box: anyone with a reading at or above 180 systolic or 120 diastolic, or with symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, severe headache, weakness or confusion, will be advised to seek emergency care, and the nurse will call 911 if the person agrees or is unable to decide. No names or identifying details will be recorded unless someone requests a follow-up call, and tally sheets will contain only counts and categories. Participation is voluntary, no one will be approached while folding laundry, and nothing will be sold or promoted.

Roles and Partnership

The owner provides the space, posts the schedule and tells regular customers about the table. The outreach coordinator attends at least half of each session, handles referrals to the association's programs and gives feedback on what residents say. The nurse supplies and maintains the equipment, staffs the table for the full session and writes a one-page summary after each session. Because partnership approaches depend on shared decisions (Israel et al., 1998), the three partners will meet for fifteen minutes after each session to review the measures in Table 1 and agree on one change for the next month.

Timeline

Session 1 runs on the first Saturday of next month, from eight to eleven in the morning, and sessions 2 through 6 follow on the first Saturday of each month after that. The schedule will be shared through the barber, the tenants' group, the church's Saturday meal and the branch library, the channels identified in the asset map. After session 3, the partners will review whether the hours, location in the store or offerings should change. After session 6, they will decide whether to continue.

Sustainability

The project will only matter if something continues after this course. Three options will be explored with the partners from the start: the community health center's outreach staff taking over the table, a nursing program at the local community college adopting it as a clinical community site, or the association training a volunteer to run the paperwork help while a nurse volunteer handles blood pressure checks. The one-page session summaries, the tally data and a short operating guide will be written so that someone else can pick up the table without starting over.

Costs are small and covered in advance. The association has agreed to buy a validated automated upper-arm monitor with a small, regular and large cuff, a box of printed referral cards and a clipboard for the tally sheet. The nurse will clean the cuff between users and check the monitor against a second device before the first session. Keeping the equipment simple means a successor will not need a budget to continue.

Conclusion

This plan keeps the project small, specific and shared. It measures what a monthly table can actually achieve, follows published guidance for its two main activities, draws clear lines around nursing scope and gives the partners the information they need to decide whether the wash-day health table should outlast the course.

References

Israel, B. A., Schulz, A. J., Parker, E. A., & Becker, A. B. (1998). Review of community-based research: Assessing partnership approaches to improve public health. Annual Review of Public Health, 19, 173-202. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.19.1.173

Muntner, P., Shimbo, D., Carey, R. M., Charleston, J. B., Gaillard, T., Misra, S., Myers, M. G., Ogedegbe, G., Schwartz, J. E., Townsend, R. R., Urbina, E. M., Viera, A. J., White, W. B., & Wright, J. T., Jr. (2019). Measurement of blood pressure in humans: A scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Hypertension, 73(5), e35-e66. https://doi.org/10.1161/HYP.0000000000000087

Talevski, J., Wong Shee, A., Rasmussen, B., Kemp, G., & Beauchamp, A. (2020). Teach-back: A systematic review of implementation and impacts. PLOS ONE, 15(4), Article e0231350. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231350