NUR 675 Module 9 Final Project Example

Final Project: A Practicum Readiness Portfolio and Plan for a Quality and Leadership Practicum

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

NUR 675: MSN Seminar: Preparation for Practicum

Module Nine Final Project

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Final Project: A Practicum Readiness Portfolio and Plan for a Quality and Leadership Practicum

The practicum preparation seminar ends with a practical question: is the student ready to begin? Readiness means more than enthusiasm. It means that the student knows what she needs to learn, has objectives a preceptor can judge, has a project grounded in data and evidence, has agreed on how she and her preceptor will work together, has settled the ethical questions and has a schedule that fits the hours available. This final project presents the readiness portfolio of a charge nurse in the quality and leadership track whose twelve-week practicum targets overnight falls in a composite hospital. It argues that assembling these elements into one coherent package, with each part connected to the others, is the best preparation for a practicum that produces both learning and a useful result.

Self-Assessment and Objectives

The portfolio begins with a self-assessment against the advanced-level domains of the 2021 AACN Essentials, which describe the competencies expected of graduate-prepared nurses across ten domains (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021). The student rated herself as strong in person-centered care and clinical judgment at the bedside and as a beginner in analyzing quality data, leading interprofessional work and presenting to leaders. Her five objectives target those gaps: analyzing twelve months of fall data, evaluating evidence-based strategies and recommending one, designing a test of change, leading an interprofessional huddle and presenting results with a recommendation. Each objective lists the product or performance the preceptor will review and its due week.

The Proposal and the Model

The approved proposal defines the problem with unit data: a fall rate that doubled to 6.2 per 1,000 patient days, concentrated at night during unassisted toileting and after sedating medications. The project follows the 2017 revision of the Iowa Model, whose path runs from a trigger and a team, through weighing the evidence and piloting, to deciding on adoption and making the change stick (Iowa Model Collaborative, 2017). The portfolio includes a one-page roadmap mapping each step of the model to practicum weeks and to the team members responsible, so the model shapes the work rather than sitting in a proposal as a label.

Evidence, Preceptor and Ethics

The evidence section contains the PICOT question, the documented search, a flow diagram of screened and included studies and a synthesis table ranking studies by level and quality. The synthesis favors toileting schedules and medication review and suggests that bed alarms are unlikely to help, which redirected the project away from the unit's previous focus. The preceptor agreement, signed by the student and the hospital's quality director, sets a weekly one-hour meeting with an agenda sent the day before, lists the stretch tasks and their dates, describes how feedback will be sought and given and keeps her practicum hours separate from her charge nurse duties. The ethics section includes the hospital reviewer's letter classifying the work as improvement, not human subjects research, along with the protections for patient choice, staff data and privacy.

The Project Plan

The project plan states the aim of reducing night-shift falls from 4.1 to 2.5 per 1,000 night patient days during the practicum, describes a first PDSA cycle on four rooms followed by a unit-wide cycle and defines outcome, process and balancing measures, including patient sleep disruption. Data will be displayed on run charts. The student's project log is organized from the start around their elements, including context, the intervention and how it changed, measures, results, unintended consequences and limitations, so that the final report can be written directly from the log, following the reporting standard Ogrinc et al. (2016) published.

Schedule and Handoff

A week-by-week schedule allocates the 120 practicum hours: weeks one through four for data analysis, the evidence synthesis and the falls committee presentation; weeks five through eight for the recommendation, planning the test of change and preparing staff; weeks nine through eleven for the PDSA cycles and the interprofessional huddle; and week twelve for analysis, the final presentation and the report. Practicum hours are scheduled on the student's days off from her staff role and logged weekly with the preceptor's signature.

Because many student projects end when the practicum does, the portfolio includes a handoff plan. The unit manager has agreed to designate a night-shift nurse champion who will join the second PDSA cycle and continue monitoring round completion and falls afterward, with results reported to the falls committee monthly. The student will leave a short guide describing the process, the data collection forms and the run chart template.

The schedule builds in slack. Week seven is kept light in case data access or staff meetings slip, and if the second PDSA cycle cannot start on time, the student and preceptor have agreed to shorten it rather than extend the practicum. These contingencies were discussed with the faculty member so that everyone understands what will happen if the plan changes.

Readiness Checklist

The portfolio closes with a checklist confirmed with the preceptor and faculty member before the first practicum day: objectives approved, proposal approved, site agreement and onboarding complete, preceptor agreement signed, ethics determination on file, data access arranged through the quality department, project log and forms prepared and first-week tasks scheduled. Each item is checked or has a date for completion.

The student also reviewed her own supports. Her manager on her home unit agreed to keep her staff schedule stable during the practicum weeks, her family arranged childcare for the two evening committee meetings and she blocked time each Sunday to update the project log and prepare the Tuesday agenda. Readiness, she noted, includes the ordinary arrangements that let a working nurse attend to a practicum without falling behind.

Conclusion

The student began the seminar irritated at needing a practicum and ends it with a portfolio that shows exactly what she will learn, how she will learn it and what the unit will gain. Objectives aligned with the Essentials, a proposal grounded in data, a model applied step by step, appraised evidence, a clear preceptor agreement, an ethics determination, a project plan built for reporting and a handoff plan together make her ready to begin.

References

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education. https://www.aacnnursing.org/essentials

Iowa Model Collaborative. (2017). Iowa model of evidence-based practice: Revisions and validation. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 14(3), 175-182. https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12223

Ogrinc, G., Davies, L., Goodman, D., Batalden, P., Davidoff, F., & Stevens, D. (2016). SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence): Revised publication guidelines from a detailed consensus process. BMJ Quality & Safety, 25(12), 986-992. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2015-004411