Capstone Project Change Proposal Components
In this assignment, students will pull together the capstone project change proposal components they have been working on throughout the course to create a proposal inclusive of sections for each content focus area in the course. For this project, the student will apply evidence-based research steps and processes required as the foundation to address a clinically oriented problem or issue in future practice.
Develop a 1,250-1,500 written project that includes the following information as it applies to the problem, issue, suggestion, initiative, or educational need profiled in the capstone change proposal:
Background
Clinical problem statement.
Purpose of the change proposal in relation to providing patient care in the changing health care system.
PICOT question.
Literature search strategy employed.
Evaluation of the literature.
Applicable change or nursing theory utilized.
Proposed implementation plan with outcome measures.
Discussion of how evidence-based practice was used in creating the intervention plan.
Plan for evaluating the proposed nursing intervention.
Identification of potential barriers to plan implementation, and a discussion of how these could be overcome.
Appendix section, if tables, graphs, surveys, educational materials, etc. are created.
Review the feedback from your instructor on the Topic 3 assignment, PICOT Question Paper, and Topic 6 assignment, Literature Review. Use this feedback to make appropriate revisions to these before submitting.
Sample Answer
Background
A child’s preterm delivery is an unexpected event that significantly impacts personal and family life, particularly parenting, couple’s relationships, and relationships with other family members, grandparents, and siblings of the newborn. When a premature baby is born, its parents are “psychologically premature” and are mostly unable to recognize it as distinct from the mother. It is a life-threatening incident that necessitates hospitalization in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), resulting in a state of tension and anxiety in which the infant’s health and life are at risk and the emotional well-being of the family members (LeDuff et al., 2020). The NICU experience causes parents to have significant emotional reactions. Fear, wrath, a sense of loss, and guilt, and shame are the most common feelings that couples get to experience. Although parental help is critical in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU), nursing staff may struggle to provide appropriate backup for NICU fathers. Couples’ and family’s quality of life (QoL) is impacted by having a premature baby. Parental stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms have been shown to harm both mother and paternal QoL in a recent cross-sectional study of parents of extremely preterm newborns. Fathers of infants who had been in the hospital for two months or longer and had health difficulties, for example, had poorer social QoL. Providing education to fathers with NICU infants can help them cope with the situation and actively provide care (Baldoni et al., 2021).
Clinical problem statement.
Although parental help is critical in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU), nursing staff may struggle to provide appropriate backup for NICU fathers. Fathers are not considered capable caregivers in the same way that mothers are, and males frequently support these preconceptions. When fathers are involved in NICU childcare, there appears to be a 5.3-day reduction in neonatal admission time. The regularity of fathers’ visits and their engagement in the provision of quality care, on the other hand, has been shown to have a positive impact on baby weight and social progress both during inpatient and after several months. According to Baldoni and his colleagues, the desire of men to be fully involved in parenting is impeded by healthcare practitioners, who traditionally focus their attention on newborns and their mothers. Fathers sometimes struggle to form a strong father-child bond, and research has shown that parents of infants in the NICU are more stressed than other parents (Archibald, 2019)
Purpose of the change proposal in relation to providing patient care in the changing health care system
Couples tend to experience a rough period when they have a preterm infant in the NICU, more so fathers, as there is little support provided to them during such time, yet they are looked up to be leaders and provide direction for the family. This can often cause them to be less involved in the provision of care of the infant, which is essential to and recovery and development of the infant, as has been shown by research. The purpose of the change proposal is to determine what challenges NICU father with children admitted for more than 7 days experience and what support will be appropriate.
PICOT question.
The PICOT question is: Among fathers of NICU babies who are admitted longer than seven days (P), will implementation of a nurse specific educational program (I) compared to no intervention (C) lead to increased engagement in the provision of care (O)
Literature search strategy employed.
The study’s goal was to find research publications that used an educational program to increase the quality of father support in neonatal intensive care units. To find relevant publications, we searched internet databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and MEDLINE®, using the keywords “Paternal support in the NICU,” “Education programs and paternal support,” and “Fathers and premature births.” The search was restricted to articles that had been published after 2016. The study comprised a total of eight research publications.
Evaluation of the literature.
The research articles’ accuracy was assessed using the following criteria, which indicated if the content was accurate and based on facts. Objectivity refers to the information’s goal, as well as currency, which decides if the item was current or not; coverage determined whether or not an article satisfied the information demands, while authority determined who wrote the articles and whether or not they were peer-reviewed. The study comprised a total of eight research publications. The eight articles were further evaluated using a literature evaluation table. We looked at the purpose, study questions, design, intervention methods, and sample/sets (Borsky et al., 2019).
Applicable change or nursing theory utilized.
The five-step theory of Rogers was used in this situation. Knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation are the five phases described in theory. The individual is first exposed to innovation but lacks sufficient information; the second step is persuasion, in which the individual seeks additional information. After obtaining facts, the third stage is to decide whether or not to implement the proposal. Testing the invention after it has been adjusted to meet the environment is called implementation. The final step is to determine whether or not the invention is applicable (Vicker et al., 2021).
