MSN6026 All Units Assignments Latest 2019 January

MSN6026 - Biopsychosocial Concepts for Advanced Nursing Practice II

Unit 3 Assignment

Analysis of Position Papers for Vulnerable Populations

Professional Context

Position papers are a way for individuals, groups, and organizations to express their views and intentions toward a specific issue. In health care, many position papers address specific policies, regulations, or other approaches to care. As a master's-prepared nurse, you should feel empowered to express and advocate for your own views on policy and care matters. This is especially important when it comes to populations you or your organization cares for that are not receiving the quality, type, or amount of care that they require.

An important skill in creating a position paper or policy proposal is the ability to analyze and synthesize others' views about the population or issue of interest to you. By synthesizing the positive and negative views of an issue, you can become better equipped to strengthen your own arguments and to respond to opposing views in an informed and convincing way.

Scenario

For this assignment, pretend you are a member of an interprofessional team that is attempting to improve the quality of health care and the outcomes in a vulnerable population. For the first step in your team's work, you have decided to conduct an analysis of current position papers that address the issue and population you are considering.

In your analysis you will note the team's initial views on the issue in the population as well as the views across a variety of relevant position papers. You have been tasked with finding the most current standard of care or evidenced-based practice and evaluating both the pros and cons of the issue. For the opposing viewpoints, it is important to discuss how the team could respond to encourage support. This paper will be presented to a committee of relevant stakeholders from your care setting and the community. If it receives enough support, you will be asked to create a new policy that could be enacted to improve the outcomes related to your chosen issue and target population.

The care setting, population, and health care issue that you use for this assignment will be used in the other assignments in this course. Consider your choice carefully. There are two main approaches for you to take in selecting the scenario for this assignment:

You may use one of the issues and populations presented in the Vila Health: Health Challenges in Different Populations and Vila Health: Resources for Topical Research media pieces. For this approach, you may consider the population in the context of the Vila Health care setting, or translate it into the context in which you currently practice or have had recent experience.

You may select a population and issue that is of interest to you and set them in the context of your current or desired future care setting. While you are free to choose any population of interest, the issue you choose should fall within one of the following broad categories:

Genetics and genomics.

Sickle cell, asthma, multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis.

Immunity.

Type 1 diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), congenital neutropenia syndrome.

Chronicity.

Arthritis, any type of cancer or lung or heart disease, obesity.

Addiction.

Abuse of alcohol, prescription drugs, tobacco, illegal substances.

Emotion and mental health.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, eating disorders, psychosis.

Note: If you choose the second option, contact your instructor to make sure that your chosen issue and population will fit within the topic areas for this course.

Instructions

For this assignment you will develop a position summary and an analysis of relevant position papers on a health care issue in a chosen population. The bullet points below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Be sure that your assignment submission addresses all of them. You may also want to read the Analysis of Position Papers for Vulnerable Populations Scoring Guide and Guiding Questions: Analysis of Position Papers for Vulnerable Populations to better understand how each grading criterion will be assessed.

Explain a position with regard to health outcomes for a specific issue in a target population.

Explain the role of the interprofessional team in facilitating improvements for a specific issue in a target population.

Evaluate the evidence and positions of others that could support a team's approach to improving the quality and outcomes of care for a specific issue in a target population.

Evaluate the evidence and positions of others that are contrary to a team's approach to improving the quality and outcomes of care for a specific issue in a target population.

Communicate an initial viewpoint regarding a specific issue in a target population and a synthesis of existing positions in a logically structured and concise manner, writing content clearly with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Integrate relevant sources to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.

Submission Requirements

Length of submission: 3–5 double-spaced, typed pages, not including the title and reference pages. Your plan should be succinct yet substantive. No abstract is required.

Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3–5 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that supports your initial position on the issue, as well as a minimum of 2–3 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that express contrary views or opinions. Resources should be no more than five years old.

APA formatting: Use the APA Style Paper Template linked in the Resources. An APA Style Paper Tutorial is also provided to help you in writing and formatting your analysis.

MSN6026 - Biopsychosocial Concepts for Advanced Nursing Practice II

Unit 6 Assignment

Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal

Professional Context

As a master's-prepared nurse, you have a valuable viewpoint and voice with which to advocate for policy developments. As a nurse leader and health ­care practitioner, often on the front lines of helping individuals and populations, you are able to articulate and advocate for the patient more than any other professional group in health ­care. This is especially true of populations that may be underserved, underrepresented, or are otherwise lacking a voice. By advocating for and developing policies, you are able to help drive improvements in outcomes for specific populations. The policies you advocate for could be internal ones (just within a specific department or health care setting) that ensure quality care and compliance. Or they could be external policies (local, state, or federal) that may have more wide-ranging effects on best practices and regulations.

Scenario

The analysis of position papers that your interprofessional team presented to the committee has convinced them that it would be worth the time and effort to develop a new policy to address your specific issue in the target population. To that end, your interprofessional team has been asked to submit a policy proposal that outlines a specific approach to improving the outcomes for your target population. This proposal should be supported by evidence and best practices that illustrate why the specific approaches are likely to be successful. Additionally, you have been asked to address the ways in which applying your policy to interprofessional teams could lead to efficiency or effectiveness gains.

This assignment will build upon your Unit 3 Analysis of Position Papers for Vulnerable Populations assignment. If, for some reason, you wish to change your specific issue or target population, contact your instructor for approval.

Instructions

For this assignment you will develop a policy proposal that seeks to improve the outcomes for your chosen health care issue and target population. The bullet points below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Be sure that your assignment submission addresses all of them. You may also want to read the Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal Scoring Guide and Guiding Questions: Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal to better understand how each grading criterion will be assessed.

Propose a policy and guidelines that will lead to improved outcomes and quality of care for a specific issue in a target population.

Advocate the need for a proposed policy in the context of current outcomes and quality of care for a specific issue in a target population.

Analyze the potential for an interprofessional approach to implementing a proposed policy to increase the efficiency or effectiveness of the care setting to achieve high-quality outcomes.

Communicate proposal in a professional and persuasive manner, writing content clearly and logically with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Integrate relevant sources to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.

Submission Requirements

Length of proposal: 2–4 double-spaced, typed pages, not including title page or reference list. Your proposal should be succinct yet substantive. No abstract is required.

Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3–5 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that supports the relevance of or need for your policy, as well as interprofessional considerations. Resources should be no more than five years old.

APA formatting: Use the APA Style Paper Template linked in the Resources. An APA Style Paper Tutorial is also provided to help you in writing and formatting your proposal.

MSN6026 - Biopsychosocial Concepts for Advanced Nursing Practice II

Unit 9 Assignment

Letter to the Editor: Population Health Policy Advocacy

Professional Context

Nurses have the opportunity to use their skills and develop programs to keep individuals and communities healthy. Health is complex however, and the nurse needs to possess strong advocacy skills to successfully support a cause or interest. The American Nurses Association’s (2015) code of ethics describes the responsibility of a nurse to include working through and with appropriate stakeholders to advocate for the health of people in and out of the work environment. To be an effective advocate, there are several important abilities a nurse must possess, including problem solving, communication, and influencing others. One way a nurse can advocate to a broader population is through effective letter writing, both to legislators and through the media, such as with editorials and research articles.

Reference

American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/EthicsStandards/CodeofEthicsforNurses/Code-of-Ethics-For-Nurses.html

Scenario

Throughout this course, you have focused on a specific health issue occurring within a specific population. You researched position papers regarding this health concern, and you developed a health policy proposal to positively impact the health of the affected individuals. It is now time to reach a greater audience regarding your policy proposal.

You are going to write a letter to the editor of a peer-reviewed nursing journal. Choose from one of the journals in the Ultimate List of Nursing Journals (linked in the Resources) and go to the journal’s Web site to find out the requirements for submitting and editorial, such as format requirements, topics, and word counts. Make sure you select a nursing journal that covers the topic about which you are going to write. If you want to use another journal that is not on this list, please make sure the journal does address health care, because this is the purpose of the assignment.

Instructions

For this assignment, you will write a letter to the editor of a scholarly journal. Your goal is to be informative about the policy that you developed for your Unit 6 Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal assignment, while also being persuasive about the need for and benefit of similar policies in other health care settings. The bullet points below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Be sure that your assignment submission addresses all of them. You may also want to read the Letter to the Editor: Population Health Policy Advocacy Scoring Guide and Guiding Questions: Letter to the Editor: Population Health Policy Advocacy to better understand how each grading criterion will be assessed.

Evaluate the current state of the quality of care and outcomes for a specific issue in a target population.

Look back to the data or scenario you used in your Unit 3 assignment to address this criterion.

Analyze how the current state of the quality of care and outcomes for a specific issue in a target population necessitates health policy development and advocacy.

Justify why the developed policy will be vital in improving the quality of care and outcomes for a specific issue in a target population.

Advocate for policy development in other care settings with regard to a specific issue in a target population.

Analyze the ways in which interprofessional aspects of the policy will support efficient and effective achievement of desired outcomes for the target population.

Communicate in a professional and persuasive manner, writing content clearly and logically with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Integrate relevant sources to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style (or the journal's preferred style).

Submission Requirements

The submission requirements for your editorial will depend on the journal you choose. To find out the requirements, go to the journal's Web site. There should be a section regarding submissions that will address how to format letters to the editor, and whether there is a word count limit (there usually is a limit).

If the journal does not have submission guidelines for the number of resources required, use 3–5 sources.

To be sure that your instructor knows the submission and formatting requirements for your letter, include the journal's guidelines on a separate page at the end of the document you submit for this assessment.