DNP 835 Topic 8 Reflective Journal

Sample Answer

Nursing courses prepare nurse students to be competent practitioners differently. At the end of each course, reflecting on the competencies gained and how they improve the DNP-prepared nurses’ skills is crucial.

The purpose of this reflective journal essay is to explore personal experiences during the course DNP 835A. The course resembles other advanced practice nursing courses in preparing the nurse for practice and handling complex patient care issues.

The reflections in this essay are a genuine evaluation of how the nurse student accomplished the objectives aligned with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice (2022). The essay is an in-depth analysis of how learning occurred to improve personal knowledge and skills, discoveries made, and achievement of AACN Essentials.

Reflection

DNP 835A focuses on safety and quality health care for patients and populations. It prepares the DNP student to develop effective strategies for safety and quality enhancement besides continuous engagement in the evaluation of health care outcomes.

Usually done through safety and quality measures, evaluation helps health care practitioners to determine whether an intervention or initiative achieved the intended goals (Clarke et al., 2019). Broadly, the reflective journal highlights the core learning experiences and activities instrumental in the course completion.

The critical ones include assignments, weekly discussions, and DNP project-related activities. The learning discoveries and knowledge gained from the course involved the following essentials, outcomes, and competencies.

Essential 1 Scientific Underpinnings for Practice

The DNP 835A course focuses on practice activities that improve safety and care quality. Besides, it introduces nurses to measures for evaluating health care outcomes and sustainable change. The knowledge and skills gained from these activities allow nurses to translate knowledge to practice, which helps them to improve patient outcomes (AACN, 2022).

Since the course started, it was evident that its primary goal was to prepare the DNP nurse for patient-centered and evidence-based practice.
Various activities were instrumental in achieving Essential 1 and vital course outcomes, such as understanding sustainability change and ethical principles surrounding the practice. Key discoveries about the professional practice and approach include sustainable change, efficiency, and ethical principles.

Sustainable change in health care characterizes interventions leading to long-term impacts (Walugembe et al., 2019). Besides exploring interventions for improving care quality and safety through weeks 1-3, the DNP student also explored the causes of health disparities leading to health inequity and ethical issues inhibiting access to care. Common causes discussed in week 3 include poverty and education inequalities (Price et al., 2018; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). Together with the sustainability paper, these activities help DNP nurses to understand sustainable change, care efficiency, and ethical principles guiding health care delivery.
Essential II Organizational and Systems Leadership for Quality Improvement and Systems Thinking

Essential II concentrates on the nursing competencies that help nurses to eliminate health disparities and improve the patient experience. Addressing disparities promotes social justice and equity, besides improving patients’ and population’s health (Ndugga & Artiga, 2021). Interventions for addressing health disparities should be sustainable. Vital course activities centered on quality improvement include the sustainability paper and the sustainability plan presentation.

The quality and sustainability paper allowed the DNP nurse to explore a contemporary quality and safety issue, its measurement, and its application in nursing. Through it and weekly discussions, the DNP nurse learned the essentials of quality improvement and how organizational leadership helps. The sustainability plan discussed the measures critical in sustaining the proposed quality sustainability program. Through it, the DNP nurse learned the importance of stakeholder engagement in organizational change, the application of change management theory, and how organizational change impacts workload.

Through the course activities, the nurse develops numerous skills essential for patient and population health. Personal knowledge and skills developed from the course include strategies for achieving safety and high-care quality for patients and populations.

For instance, initiatives for improving efficiency and reducing waste through lead models and other approaches improve health outcomes significantly. The other vital competency is health care outcomes evaluation to validate interventions used in care improvement (Clarke et al., 2019). Above all, the DNP nurse is introduced into the inquiry of the state of health care delivery.

The course has adequate and relevant activities for improving the DNP nurses’ skills and competencies in patient safety and care quality. Additional resources for optimizing learning outcomes include learning materials on sustainable change and ethical principles surrounding the practice. More discussions on these areas can help nurses better understand the underlying concepts.

Conclusion
The DNP 835A course concentrates on developing nurses’ competencies in effective strategies for safety and quality enhancement, besides continuous engagement in the evaluation of health care outcomes.

This reflection essay aimed to explore the course activities and experiences that helped the DNP nurse achieve the key course’s objectives and outcomes and how they align with AACN’s Essentials. Vital course activities and experiences include weekly discussions and assignments such as the sustainability paper and plan presentation.

References
AACN. (2022). DNP Essentials. https //www.aacnnursing.org/Portals/42/Publications/DNPEssentials.pdf
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020). Health disparities. https //www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/disparities/index.htm
Clarke, G. M., Conti, S., Wolters, A. T., & Steventon, A. (2019). Evaluating the impact of healthcare interventions using routine data. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 365, l2239. https //doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l2239
Ndugga, N., & Artiga, S. (2021). Disparities in health and health care 5 key questions and answers. KFF. https //www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/disparities-in-health-and-health-care-5-key-question-and-answers/
Price, J. H., Khubchandani, J., & Webb, F. J. (2018). Poverty and health disparities What can public health professionals do?. Health Promotion Practice, 19(2), 170–174. https //doi.org/10.1177/1524839918755143
Walugembe, D. R., Sibbald, S., Le Ber, M. J., & Kothari, A. (2019). Sustainability of public health interventions where are the gaps?. Health Research Policy and Systems, 17(1), 1-7. https //doi.org/10.1186/s12961-018-0405-y