NUR 705 Discussion 2.1 Project Topic Ideas

Sample Answer

When considering ideas for my DNP project, I consider the field of nursing that I currently work in, what I experience everyday at work, and some barriers to care that my patients commonly experience in the emergency department setting at a Level I trauma center in central Illinois. I previously worked in a small 20-bed rural emergency department which adds to the perspective and ideas for my DNP project. When considering the barriers to care for both the current large ER that I work in and the small rural ER that I worked in previously, a few themes are common.

Consistently I see barriers to care for mental health patients in the emergency department setting. Patients often are “held” in our ER for days, weeks on end, waiting for placement at a mental health facility. These patients often present to the ER after outpatient treatment has failed them or they are in acute crisis, being held in a single ER room for multiple days and not seeing the light of day can dramatically affect/worsen someone’s mental health, especially when it is already in a vulnerable state. There are often not good protocols in place for these patients. They routinely do not get showers, any physical activity, etc. while being held in these settings. They have a severely restricted stay while in the ER setting.

Another vulnerable population that is seen in the ER that often has barriers to care are sexual assault and domestic assault patients. These patients often do not have the adequate follow-up, discharge/safety planning, and access to resources as they should. In the rural ER setting, there were often not qualified nurses to perform sexual assault kits for the victims of sexual assaults. Their care was often not performed or followed up on afterwards like it should due to lack of knowledge of the staff and inadequate training of staff.

As previously identified in a prior course at Bradley, I identified the need for a teaching program for nurse staff in emergency departments in central IL to help teach them about the resources available, what members of the community that needed to be involved in this patient’s care from cops to social workers, and discharge instructions/information to provide to these patients presenting with domestic assault and sexual assault survivors.
Both of these DNP project ideas have strong support/need backing them which would help justify the reason for the need for my project.

They directly affect vulnerable populations that are commonly seen in the emergency department setting. Both project ideas focus on direct change for these populations to help improve their quality of life during and after their emergency department visit. Sustainability would be important for these projects to keep them going and implementing changes in the emergency department. Local funding for mental health, sexual, and domestic assault patients like Prairie Center Against Sexual Assault helps fund initiatives like this project.

Some search terms that I would use to find scholarly articles for sources for the first project idea would include “mental health patients AND emergency medicine,” “psychiatric evaluation emergency,” “delays in inpatient psychiatric care,” “mental health holds in the emergency department,” “safety for mental health patients emergency department,” and “restrictions to mental health treatment in emergency department setting.” Search terms for the second project would include “sexual assault AND domestic assault survivor emergency medicine,” “SANE nursing,” “post-assault care in emergency medicine,” “sexual assault follow up resources,” and “domestic abuse follow up resources.”

I would use the boolean phrases like AND and OR for my search terms to be all inclusive of the topics that I am interested in researching for my DNP project. I would limit my range of articles from the past five years. I would also limit them to the United States, English language, and open-text articles.