Develop a 5-page plan to evaluate the intervention that is based on Assessment 2-4. Noting that a simulation lab is a key component along with the immediate feedback from me at a clinical setting in reference to therapeutic communication and the utilization of a process recording.

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Solution

Evaluation Plan Design

After the implementation of the strategies to equip the nursing students on practicum with essential communication competencies, what follows is the evaluation of the effectiveness of the exercise. Like with any pedagogical endeavor, this evaluation is expected to be summative as it comes at the very end of the implementation. For that reason, the purpose of this paper is to outline the evaluation plan of the six-week intervention done for the ADN students on practicum to equip them with essential communication skills and competencies.

Evaluation Plan

Defining the Outcomes

Every intervention plan has got outcomes that need to be achieved or realized at the end of the exercise. In the case of this project that is evaluated for success or failure, the outcomes that the proponent was attempting to achieve were:

1. To have a graduating nursing workforce that is capable of using effective communication in establishing a therapeutic nurse-patient relationship relevant for healing. This is important because the final patient outcome for every patient depends on the very first rapport that the nurse creates with the patient. If the patient begins by getting a negative impression of the nurse and developing a negative attitude towards them, their recovery will be compromised since care is supposed to be holistic.
2. To have a graduating nursing workforce of psychiatric nurses who can communicate well in the interprofessional setup through reports, SOAP notes, and other means. This is extremely important because the continuity of care essentially depends on the effectiveness of this kind of communication within the care team. When mistakes are made in this area with hitches in communication, serious errors may occur resulting in harm to the patient.

• To have a graduating nursing workforce that is good in listening since this is an essential quality of a good communicator. The nurses are also expected to be good at noticing and interpreting non-verbal communication from both patients and colleagues.

The above outcomes illustrate the purpose of the intervention and project in that they are specific on what needs to be achieved in terms of the objectives of the project. In every project, expected outcomes are reflective of the goals and objectives set at the beginning of the exercise. For this reason, the outcomes illustrate exactly what the project’s intervention seeks to achieve. Because the outcomes are expressly stated, they can be considered as possessing or representing the framework that can then be later used to improve on quality, patient safety, and a memorable experience of care (AHRQ, 2018).

Creating an Evaluation Plan

In this evaluation plan, several techniques are going to be used to measure and evaluate the degree to which the outcomes illustrated above have been achieved. These techniques include:

• Written tests that will be marked and graded to see if the cognitive domain of learning has been covered successfully.
• Case presentations that will be graded by the preceptors to determine if the affective and psychomotor domains of learning have been adequately covered and mastered.
• Real-life practical communication with a patient within the context of the practicum setting in the presence of the preceptor. This will enable the preceptor to gauge whether the student has acquired the necessary communication skills as was intended by the expected outcomes.
• A patient satisfaction survey conducted at the end of the practicum season using a Likert-type questionnaire.

There are a number of data types that will be needed to successfully evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. In summary, this data will be both qualitative and quantitative. For instance, there will be need to collect data on the way the patients feel the nurses have communicated with them and whether they were pleased or not. This kind of data is qualitative and a number of themes will be drawn after analyzing them. But there will also be the need to collect data on the number or percentage of medical and nursing errors that have occurred during the period of the intervention. Usually, these errors occur as a result of failed communication within the interprofessional care team. This kind of data is quantitative in nature.

The data above will be collected through the use of a questionnaire tool but also from the dashboard metrics of the practicum center’s electronic health record (EHR) system (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017; McGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). In this endeavor, the tools and technology that will be used in collecting the data include smartphones to record interviews with patients (qualitative data) that can then be listened to later and themes arrived at. Also, the computers and the certified electronic health record technology (CEHRT) software in them will help with collecting crucial patient data that will be mostly quantitative (Wang et al., 2018).

Analysis and evaluation of the collected data will employ several strategies. The first will be the need to clean the data and weed out ambiguous details or figures that do not make sense/ had been entered incorrectly. The second strategy will be to group together similar sentiments and views of patients (qualitative data) and then come up with broad themes that can then be worked with to draw conclusions. Last but not least will be the use of data analysis software such as the SPSS to analyze the quantitative data. This will enable the use of its inbuilt ability to use inferential nonparametric tests such as analysis of variance (ANOVA), Chi-square test, linear regression, and student’s t-test amongst others. This evaluation plan will illustrate the impact that the intervention had by coming out with statistically proven conclusions.

Discussion

Advocacy

The nurse is a very important player in healthcare when it comes to change. As a patient advocate, the nurse is better placed to understand the concerns of patients and to institute change within their organizations. This change will then aim at addressing the patient concerns about the quality of care. The nurse is also expected to always use evidence-based practice or EBP. This means that they should only use those interventions that have been proven to be efficacious by scholarly peer-reviewed scientific evidence. For this, the nurse is also expected to carry out clinical inquiry and question common practice (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2019). The evidence and recommendations that they come up with is then disseminated with a view to having them incorporated into the existing body of EBP through a change process (Brownson et al., 2018). This is how important the nurse is as a change agent. It is therefore through clinical inquiry that the nurse drives improvements in the quality of care and patient experience.

Impact of Intervention on the Nursing Profession and Role

The intervention plan in this project affects the nursing profession in that it improves the competence of the nurses graduating and enables them to produce even better patient outcomes. Its impact on the role of nurses is also that they become better patient advocates just by way of communicating better and understanding the patient’s problems better. Also, this intervention plan profoundly affects interprofessional collaboration. The reason is that effective communication is the glue that holds together care teams comprised of different disciplines. If interprofessional team members cannot communicate effectively, care quality will be compromised and patient safety will be put at risk. The other gains and benefits to the healthcare sector from this intervention are that having a nursing workforce that understands the importance of communication fosters multiculturalism. This is important in an increasingly diverse society.

Future Steps

Improving the Project

This project can be broadened and improved to reach an even larger target population and audience by taking advantage of technology. This can be done by revising and compiling the instruction and lectures on communication competence into an electronic module. It is then availed on various electronic platforms so that any nurse anywhere in the world can access it. It can also better take advantage of emerging technology through the delivery of the content via webinars and online conferencing software.

Reflection on Leading Change and Improvement

I feel that by doing this project, my ability to impact change has improved tremendously. This is because I learned a lot during the process of carrying out this change project. This impact will without doubt positively affect me personally and also in any future leadership positions as I will be able to guide my followers with knowledge and competence on matters of communication.

The work I have done in the project above can now be transferred into my current clinical practice and also of my colleagues through the process of dissemination. Dissemination takes several forms including podium presentations, publication, and policy briefs amongst others (Brownson et al., 2018). Dissemination is a part of the entire process of translation into practice. It is therefore translation into practice that will see the outcomes of this project incorporated into other care settings and contexts.      

References

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ] (2018). Six domains of health care quality. https://www.ahrq.gov/talkingquality/measures/six-domains.html

Alotaibi, Y., & Federico, F. (2017). The impact of health information technology on patient safety. Saudi Medical Journal, 38(12), 1173–1180. https://doi.org/10.15537/smj.2017.12.20631

Brownson, R.C., Eyler, A.A., Harris, J.K., Moore, J.B., & Tabak, R.G. (2018). Getting the word out: New approaches for disseminating public health science. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 24(2), 102–111. https://doi.org/10.1097/PHH.0000000000000673

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K.G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge, 4^th ed. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Melnyk, B.M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2019). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practice, 4^th ed. Wolters Kluwer.

Wang, Y., Kung, L., & Byrd, T.A. (2018). Big data analytics: Understanding its capabilities and potential benefits for healthcare organizations. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 126(1), 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2015.12.019