Answer for NRS 465 Week 7 Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal – Topic 7

Sample Answer for NRS 465 Week 7 Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal – Topic 7

The proposed project is reducing and preventing patient falls among elderly inpatients. The project requires a list of resources and in the process of getting them, one must consider the relationship between policy, regulatory requirements, and economics on expected outcomes. Policy, either organizational or sectorial, plays a critical role in shaping care outcomes. Policies set standards and guidelines for care provision (Bellot et al., 2024). For instance, in this project, the government’s policy on value-based care reimbursement by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) considers patient falls as “never events” meaning that the practicum cannot access resources to attain the expected outcomes. Regulatory requirements also have substantial effects on my project as they ensure care offered meets set standards and principles. For instance, purposeful hourly rounding is effective when providers adhere to set boundaries in their interactions and evaluation of patients. Economics is another critical aspect that impacted the project. The available funds in the practicum site determine the extent of the project’s implementation. For instance, resource limitation meant that I had to prioritize certain interventions over others.

The interplay between policy, regulatory requirements, and economics has a significant effect on the project. The limitations emanating from these factors may influence and inform the care the practicum site can provide to patients, especially related to reducing falls using intentional hourly rounding (Lam et al., 2020). The interplay is also critical as it ensures that the proposed intervention leads to safe, effective, and high-quality care for patients to get better outcomes. The implication is that these aspects are critical to providing quality care and having expected patient outcomes.

Reflecting on my practicum site experience, I remember a meeting with the nurse floor manager in charge of geriatric patients who confided in me that the facility requires additional resources, especially nurses, to improve the frequency of doing purposeful or intentional rounding. The manager was also emphatic that reducing falls is critical to ensuring they optimally use resources since they do not get reimbursement from CMS for expenses related to the events. The nurse also asserted that implementing the intervention requires an approval process by the board of management (Ruppel et al., 2022). However, she was optimistic that based on the different aspects of the interventions, the probability of board approval was high. This experience demonstrates the challenges of implementing changes in healthcare settings and the importance of navigating the complex interplay of policy, regulatory requirements, and economics.

References

Bellot, J., Fennessey, A., Gerolamo, A., Kerr, M., & Wenner, T. (2024). Design and

Implementation of a Nursing Capstone Across a Multisite Health System. Journal of Nursing Education, 63(5): 292-297. DOI: 10.3928/01484834-20240305-03

Lam, C. K., Schubert, C. F., & Herron, E. K. (2020). Evidence‐based practice competence in

nursing students preparing to transition to practice. Worldviews on evidence‐based nursing, 17(6): 418-426. DOI: 10.1111/wvn.12479.