Get Expert Help to Write your DNP Clinical Scholarly Capstone Project (CSP)

A Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) clinical scholarly project (CSP) is an academic project that focuses on a clinical practice problem and applies standard methodologies to acquire evidence and apply the results to improve practices in the clinical setting. It is a requirement to address competencies among health care providers by enabling them to offer high-quality care to patients using evidence-based practices.

The DNP project is meant to fill in the gap between research and practice. Capstone & Dissertation Writing Services has the best doctoral-level writers who are equipped to help nursing students write the best clinical scholarly projects. The sections covered in this article are:

• AACN DNP Essentials
• Identifying Gaps in Nursing Practice
• Types of Acceptable DNP Clinical Scholarly Projects
• Application of Theory in a Clinical Scholarly Project
• Data Collection and Analysis for a CSP Project
• Discussion and Dissemination of CSP Project Results

Understanding the AACN DNP Essentials

DNP follows the eight essentials provided in the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN, 2006). The essentials of DNP education equip the doctorate nurses with the tools they require to carry out their roles with utmost competence.

The DNP essentials include: Scientific underpinnings for practice, leadership of organizations and systems to improve quality and systems thinking, establishing clinical scholarship and analytical methods for evidence-based practice, adoption of information systems and patient care technology for the improvement and transformation of health care, health care policy for advocacy in health care,  embracing Inter-professional collaboration for improving patient and population health outcomes, Clinical prevention and population health for improving the nation’s health, and Advanced nursing practice.

Every student should be aware of these DNP  essentials to demonstrate the applicable ones in their project.

Identifying Gaps in Nursing Practice and Getting Started

(a). Conducting a SWOT Analysis

The process of identifying a gap in practice for a clinical scholarly project begins by exploring the problems within the nursing practice.  Identify the problem by observing the phenomena to generate perceptions about the current state of the identified phenomena. Then use assessment tools to evaluate the phenomenon of interest. One of the tools you can use is the SWOT Analysis.

SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. The SWOT Analysis evaluates the internal strengths and weaknesses, and the external opportunities and threats faced within the area of study. SWOT analysis provides a wide perspective of the current situation that leads to the identification of a gap in the situation, or validation of the perceptions.

Once you have identified a gap, explore and describe the specific problem using evidence presented in the literature. The literature review provides variables that influence the identified research problem for the clinical scholarly project. The variables are used to evaluate outcomes in the CSP project and could be dependent variables or independent variables.

(b). Formulating Clinical a Question(s)

Once you have conducted the literature review, formulate clinical questions to be used in your clinical scholarly project. These clinical questions could be quantitative or qualitative depending on the nature of your clinical scholarly project. The mnemonic used to develop clinical questions is PICOS or PICOT.

PICO stands for population, intervention, comparison intervention, and outcome measures. (S) stands for study designs while (T) stands for time frame. The quantitative questions focus on the study problem without involving the study participants. The responses to quantitative questions should be measurable, for example, blood pressure, blood count, and the scales for measurement should be indicated if they are published or validated.

In the contrary, the qualitative questions focus on the participants in the description of the phenomenon being studied and relate to the subjective experience of a population. The context in qualitative questions varies depending on the objectives of the researcher. Once you have identified the nature of questions you want to ask, you develop a causal pathway to illustrate the link between the phenomena of interest and the health outcomes that the phenomena are perceived to influence.

(c). Identifying Stakeholders for the Project

The other step in a DNP clinical scholarly project involves identifying the right stakeholders and partners. First, identify all the groups whose activities are covered in your guideline or whose reasons for contributing to the process are legitimate. When evidence is presented, a single-specialty group will reach different conclusions, which are then used to develop recommendations. The group members should be at least six and not more than fifteen. You should indicate the roles of each group member.

Types of Acceptable DNP Clinical Scholarly Projects

There are various types of DNP clinical scholarly projects that are acceptable.

• The first type of DNP CSP project is the community action projects, which work with professional coalitions to develop health programs for vulnerable groups or communities instead of individuals.
• The second type of DNP project involves translating research into practice application to ensure quality improvement, implementation, and evaluation of policies and evidence-based practice guidelines.
• The third type of DNP project involves the evaluation of interventions in care techniques.
• The fourth type of DNP project is the assessment of health promotion and community health, which capitalizes on epidemiology and continuity of care among patients.
• The fifth type of DNP project is the policy related scholarly projects which implement new policies and also compare the existing policies with world health organization (WHO) recommendations.
• The sixth type of DNP project involves evaluation of the integration of technology in healthcare and informatics.

Application of Theory in a Clinical Scholarly Project

A theory in a clinical scholarly project is a scientifically accepted concept that is derived from a conceptual model and states the relations between the concepts in that model. Nursing theories help explore what nurses do why they do it. Doctors of nursing practice use theories to shape strategies for delivering health care so as to achieve expected outcomes.

There are different nursing theories applied in clinical scholarly projects such as the grand theories and the middle range nursing theories. Grand theories are broad and abstract to provide a general framework for nursing ideas. These grand theories are mostly generated from the personal experience of a nurse theorist. Middle-range nursing theories are more specific and only analyze a particular situation with limited variables.

The middle-range nursing theories emerge from research, nursing practice, or other theories of similar disciplines. Other nursing theories could include the metatheory and the practice-level nursing theories. Nurses must identify and understand theories in line with nursing to distinguish nursing practice from other bodies of knowledge such as medicine.

Data Collection and Analysis for a CSP Project

(a) Primary Data Collection

You need to consider several factors before deciding on the data collection methods. First, the variables identified and used to formulate clinical questions are a major guide to the data collection method to be used. Sources of data for a clinical scholarly project can be primary or secondary. One of the primary methods you can use to collect data for a clinical scholarly project is the use of questionnaire surveys.

Questionnaire surveys are appropriate for collecting data addressing factors such as the demographic characteristics, medical history, the lifestyle practices of patients, among others. These factors reveal the participant's knowledge and attitudes towards those factors. When administering a questionnaire survey, you are required to include standards for reporting patient-reported outcomes and highlight them in your survey. To ensure high-quality data that can be compared, standardized, and validated instruments are used to measure the patient-reported outcomes.

Another approach in collecting primary data for a clinical scholarly project is the collection of biologic samples. The collection of biological samples involves using samples from the study participant and profiling the participant’s status to help you understand the response of the participant to a disease or treatment. In collecting biologic samples, you need to consider the frequency of collection, the timing of collecting the specimen, the cost involved by yourself as a researcher, and the participant too, the need for standardization of the methods you use for testing and interpreting the biologic samples.

(b) Secondary Data Collection

• One of the various sources of secondary data for clinical scholarly projects that you can use is the Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO).
• A second approach for collecting secondary data in a clinical scholarly project is the review of hospital medical records, where you use medical records to acquire the data you require based on your research study. A review of hospital medical records is a reliable and cost-effective source of data. In cases where the use of electronic medical records referred to as the electronic health record (EHR) and administrative data has been adopted, it is easy to acquire data for a clinical scholarly project. In cases where the information recorded is unstandardized, this method can be challenging. A major limitation of medical records as a source of research data is that important patient-reported information could be lacking.
• The third source of secondary data is the Health Risk Assessment (HRA) which provides evidence-based information through patient-reported responses to health-related questions. A fourth approach to acquiring secondary data is requesting for the research data from an organization. Requesting data from an organization requires you to understand the procedure for requesting the data by investigating the policies and processes that the organization follows to release data.

The approaches involved in data collection for a clinical scholarly project have to be approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). This is to protect and manage the risk to human participants involved in the research study. The IRB ensures the research ethical values are adhered to and that only ethical and scientifically valid research is approved for implementation.

(c). Quantitative / Qualitative Data Analysis

Once you have collected data for your clinical scholarly project, the data collection forms are reviewed, verified, and cleaned. Both qualitative and quantitative data are coded in preparation for analysis. Quantitative data is analyzed using descriptive analysis or inferential analysis.

You first evaluate the distribution of the outcome and the independent variables using frequency distributions and histograms and then use parametric analyses to obtain results. The descriptive analysis involves finding patterns in the descriptive data and graphics using measures of central tendency and variation that can be presented in Microsoft excel.

Descriptive analysis helps understand the characteristics of the participants and the measures of independent and outcome variables. The inferential analysis shows the relationships between multiple variables to help generalize results. It includes correlations, regression among others using analysis approaches such as scatter plots, chi-square tests, among others.

Statistical programs Used for analyzing quantitative data include the SPSS and SAS. Your choice of the statistical software depends on how accurately the analyses can measure the DNP project outcome. In the case of qualitative data, there are various approaches of analysis that could be used including content analysis, narrative analysis, use of the grounded theory, discourse analysis among others.

The qualitative data involving verbal and narrative data could also be analyzed using computerized software products such as Nvivo are used. The techniques employed are specific and are designed to organize answers around the clinical question.

Final Write-up and Dissemination of the CSP Project

Once you are done analyzing the research data for your clinical scholarly project, you then interpret your findings. Start by issuing the participant response and describing the clinical setting for your clinical project. Then discuss the data outcomes and implications concerning the clinical problem while indicating how the results of the clinical scholarly project can be applied according to the DNP essentials. Summarize the limitations of the research data and the next steps for improvement.

Finally, you disseminate the results to your audience to ensure your results are received and understood. You could use approaches such as submitting an abstract to a peer-review journal, presenting the results using power-point to your target audience, or discussing the results with your colleagues among other approaches. We also assist DNP student to write other assignments such as discussions, essays, reflection papers, and SOAP notes. You are always welcome to use our professional services or make inquiries.