Quantitative Research
Write a fully developed and detailed APA essay addressing each of the following points/questions. There is no required word count; be sure to completely answer all the questions for each question in detail. Separate each section in your paper with a clear heading that allows your professor to know which bullet you are addressing in that section of your paper. Support your ideas with at least one (1) source using citations in your essay. Make sure to cite using the APA writing style for the essay. The cover page and reference page are required. Review the rubric criteria for this assignment.
Conduct a literature search to select a quantitative research study related to the problem identified in Module 1 and conduct an initial critical appraisal. Respond to the overview questions for the critical appraisal of quantitative studies, including:
Is this quantitative research report a case study, case control study, cohort study, randomized control trial or systematic review?
Where does the study fall in the hierarchy of evidence in terms of reliability and risk of bias?
Why was the study done? (Define the problem and purpose.)
Were the steps of the study clearly identified?
What was the sample size?
Are the measurements of major variables reliable and valid? Explain.
How were the data analyzed?
Were there any untoward events during the conduct of the study?
How do the results fit with previous research in the area? (This may be reflected in the literature review.)
What does this research mean to clinical practice?
Additionally, be sure to include the rapid appraisal questions for the specific research design of the quantitative study that you have chosen. These can be found in Chapter 5 of the textbook (Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt, 2015).
This critical appraisal should be written in complete sentences (not just a numbered list) using APA format.
Provide a reference for the article according to APA format and a copy of the article.
Assignment Expectations:
Length: Clearly and fully answer all questions; attach a copy of the article
Structure: Include a title page and reference page in APA format. Your essay must include an introduction and a conclusion.
References: Use appropriate APA style in-text citations and references for all resources utilized to answer the questions. A minimum of one (1) scholarly source for the article is required for this assignment.

Module 3 – SLP
PROMOTING AND EVALUATING HEALTH BEHAVIORS
For Module 3, conduct a literature search utilizing peer-reviewed journal articles, books, professional organization Web sites and articles, etc., to continue working on your program/intervention plan (which you started in Module 2) and propose appropriate evaluation measures to evaluate effectiveness of your program.
Write a paper (3 pages in length) including a complete workplan that shows your implementation procedures to address the health behavior and describing your methods to evaluate your program/intervention. A workplan sample can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/OralHealth/state_programs/pdf/workplans.pdf
The following items will be assessed in particular:
Use the feedback I gave you in the previous module to refine and update your goal and objectives.
Include a complete workplan with the following components: goals, objectives, activities, data measurement tools, timeframe, responsible person, and measures of success.
Describe how you will evaluate the effectiveness of your program. Make sure to include information on what evaluation tool you plan to use (e.g., questionnaire and survey).
Discuss how you will know if your program or intervention is effective. Refer back to your program goal and objectives.
SLP Assignment Expectations
Assessment and Grading: Your paper will be assessed based on the performance assessment rubric. You can view it under Assessments at the top of the page. Review it before you begin working on the assignment. Your work should also follow these Assignment Expectations.

Development of an evidence-based practice project must include the direct and indirect impact that will be encountered through implementation. Staff retention of newly hired nurses specific to the night shift is the focus of my project and its impact on the nurses, facility and community that is served. According to published reports, a supportive work environment, especially between managers and employees, creates a strong deterrent to nurses leaving an organization by improving perception of organizational support, employee engagement, team cohesion, and connection to the mission of the health-care setting (Kurnat-Thoma, Ganger, Peterson, & Channell, 2017).
Financial aspect – staffing cost/turnover cost
Hospital staffing turnover is projected to 5% to 5.8% of total hospital annual operating budget and is largely driven by the loss and necessary replacement of qualified nurses according to Waldman, J., Kelly, F., Arora, S., Smith, H. (2010).
Proposal direct impact – hospital revenue/staffing costs,
Proposal indirect impact – patient outcomes, positive healing environment perception by staff/patients
Quality Aspect – High turnover in any industry can be a concern, especially those that are customer-centric. Industries that deal with people’s health are in an even more precarious position. Institutions with high attrition must consider how a “revolving door” of care providers affects the quality of care an institution is able to provide, and the satisfaction of patients with their overall experience according to Arena (2018).
Proposal direct impact –
Separation Costs – Continued benefits, temporary labor, overtime to existing employees
• Recruitment Costs – Job description, posting on job boards, screening candidates, interviewing candidates, assessing candidates
• Onboarding Costs – Orientation and training of new hire
Proposal indirect impact –
Loss of productivity
• Lack of staff while positions are being filled
• Increased pressure on existing staff to cover and pick up the extra work often leading to burnout
• Patients receiving less attention
• Pressure on current staff to train and then gel with the new employees
• Lack and lag of knowledge with new employees concerning institutional practices, workplace norms, team behaviors, and patient knowledge, familiarity, and care experience
Clinical aspect – unit cohesiveness/patient care
Many nurses leave their positions because of negative experiences with heavy or unrealistic workloads and due to feeling unheard and undervalued. Clinical nurses’ sense of disempowerment can be related to lack of leadership interventions. Clinical nurses may feel that managers are insensitive to their staffing needs, don’t support employee well-being, and don’t invest enough in staff education or clinical advancement according to Linnen and Rowley (February 2014).
Proposal direct impact – nurses will see themselves as stewards for their unit. “Nurses are leaders by virtue of their responsibilities; for them, empowerment isn’t a privilege, but a professional necessity” (Linnen and Rowley, 2014).
Proposal indirect impact –
– Nurse advancement
– Staff participation in policy and governance
– Leadership support
– Adequate staff and resources
– Nurse/physician relations
Comment 2
My mentor is a wound care nurse and my proposal is about quality improvement and how it affects pressure ulcers. After discussing with my mentor, we discussed that a financial aspect for developing an evidence-based practice project would be a reduction in billing for treatment, such as special ointments, creams, and dressings that are billed to the patient, patient’s payer source, and facility. A quality aspect would be an improvement of the quality of care. Evidence-based practice would prevent the development of pressure ulcers and/or improve the healing of current pressure ulcers. A clinical care aspect would be understanding who the target population is and what type of facility they are in.
My proposal would directly impact all of these aspects because treating these types of wounds can be very costly to not only the patient or patient’s payer, but also the facility. The facility usually has a house supply of basic dressings and wound care supplies, such as calcium alginate with and without silver, different types of dressings, collagen, etc. Over time, this can become very costly because dressing changes need to be done on a daily basis and as needed. To improve healing and prevent wound development, evidence-based studies have proven that turning patients at least every two and keeping them clean and dry significantly decreases the development of pressure ulcers. The use of preventive materials (types of mattresses, positioning devices, etc.), characteristics of the residents (personal preference of preventive materials, presence of existing ulcers, and positioning), protocols based on four themes (observation of the skin, frequency of repositioning and postures, use of support surfaces, and elevation of heels also helps as well (Beeckman, Clays, Van Hecke, et al., 2013).
Comment 3 6DQ1
Proposed solution to address issue of staff retention – Implementation of Mentor/Mentee partnership program that addresses the perception of job expectations from the viewpoint of new staff. How this idea relates to how the unit runs and aid in transforming perception to reality in the workplace. Solicitation of nurse’s feedback regarding orientation/mentoring process, satisfaction with job description, and reasons for job change or shift changes if any in past year.
How this proposal has changed since I began – My proposal has changed to include adding a more inclusive program to orient and mentor newly hired staff that includes a broader spectrum of resources. Leadership, peer, and instruction involvement in a process that develops confidence, and well-being in nurses and that provides follow through that lasts through a full year of mentorship.
What led to current perspective and direction – Seeing the frustration in nursing staff that are left on the unit to fill in the empty spots where new nurses have left or changed shifts due to feelings of lack of support and comradery. Building an orientation program that respects the individual needs of nurses and that places nurses in a position to be confident and feel supported throughout their orientation. Also, to understand what is expected in the job that they have been hired for and that they will have a source or resource that will be available for continued feedback.
Comment 4
My proposed solution would be to increase quality improvement for the residents in Windsor Rosewood Care Center and decrease the incidence of pressure ulcers. Implementation would be based on evidence-based practices, such as turning at-risk patients at least every two hours, keep them clean and dry, and make sure they are getting enough nutrition, and for those that have diabetes, help manage it better. Based on my research, there are many ways to increase quality improvement in nursing homes. One article used a pay-for-performance plan by performing regular inspections and assessments based on a Minimum Data Set and Online Survey, Certification, and Reporting data. It provided information about how clinical weights, staffing ratios, and inspection deficiencies impact clinical outcomes (Konetzka, Skira, & Werner, 2018). Another article by Hartmann, Mills, Pimentel, Palmer, Allen, Zhao…& Snow (2018), provided valuable information about how patient-staff interaction plays a significant role in clinical outcomes. Nurses are constantly in contact with their patients and how they interact with one another can have a positive or negative on patient outcomes. Medication can only go so far, but caring for the well-being and meeting the needs of their patients emotionally can help them get better, and/or ease their suffering and pain. I have also learned that efforts need to be made on all organizational levels and all health care professionals must work with one another.
My proposed solution has changed in that I was focused quality improvement as a whole, such as wounds, falls, and diseases (pneumonia, catheter-associated infections, and respiratory illnesses). After writing what my PICOT question was on one of the threads, the instructor suggested that I need to be more specific. I decided to write a solution about wound care and falls because my mentor is a wound care nurse and many of the residents are at risk for falls. Then this past week, I decided that I should focus on just pressure wounds because many of the residents are at great risk and it continues to be a very big problem. There is also a lot of valuable information that I have learned from scholarly articles and implement the ideas into my own nursing practice.

For this discussion, you will need to address all of the questions below and be sure to participate fully by responding to your classmates as well. Citations should be used to support your analysis and references should be included in APA format. Be sure to review the Discussion Question Guidelines before you begin!
This week, you will be creating a small research paper based upon a career that you wish to pursue. This assignment will help you do research on this topic and to paraphrase your information which means to put it in your own words. This also builds upon research you did in UVC1000 in Weeks 4 and 5. Use the skills you have and try new research techniques. Document (write down and share) what you tried and how successful you were.
Part I
Using a search engine like http://google.com and the SUO Online Library, conduct a basic Internet search to find résumés and articles from your degree field and information about the field. If you cannot find an article about your degree field, perhaps you could find an article by someone in the field.
Post a discussion below that includes the following components:
Identifies the career you chose and explains why you chose it.
Shares two references from the Internet and two references from the SUO Online library that you looked at. Include the URL and the publication, title, author, and date published if available. In the library, you can use the Cite or Citation buttons to give you APA formatted references, just do not include the last line: “Retrieved from: http://wherever.com” information because resource URLs do not work to link back to the library. If you need help with locating material, please contact the Online Librarian (Ask a Librarian) or your instructor.
Explain what search terms you used and the criteria you used to determine if the information was credible.
Compare your experience searching on the Internet and searching in the Online Library. Please try advanced search options and report on them. This can be very eye opening.
Note that from this week on throughout your college career, the grading criteria that mentions information literacy includes the requirement of providing references in APA format to support your ideas.
Part II
Using one of the articles you identified in your Internet or library search, do the following:
Copy and paste an example of a paragraph from one of your resources. Any directly copied information needs to be in quotation marks. Include an in-text citation for this paragraph—see the example below. (n.d. stands for no date)
One recruiter’s advice is simple: Don’t obsess over the skills section to the point of embellishment. “In adding a skills section to their résumé, a lot of people have a tendency to exaggerate their level of expertise in various technologies,” says Scott Hajer, senior corporate recruiter for Software Architects. Hajer continues, “They figure the more keywords, the more exposure” (Hoffman, n.d., para. 3).
“Although many people think that the more keywords in their résumé, the better, it isn’t good to exaggerate your technology skills so only include keywords for skills that you already have” (Hoffman, n.d.).
Include the full reference at the bottom of your posting. In reality, you would only have either a quotation or paraphrased information, not both. Paraphrasing is what you strive for in college with an in-text citation which will lead you to the full reference on the References page. You might have several of the same in-text citations for an article in your paper but only one full reference for that article on the References page. See the example below for the full reference for the quote above.
Hoffman, A. (n.d.). Tips to show your IT skills on your technology resume. Retrieved from http://career-advice.monster.com/resumes-cover-letters/Resume-Writing-Tips/Show-Your-Skills-on-Your-IT-Resume/article.aspx.
Describe any challenges you had paraphrasing and citing the information.
***Note: Your final project (Week 5 Project) is a personal résumé based on specific Word formatting skills. The résumés you researched this week will help you create a résumé suitable for your field of study. Save them in your folder so you can find them later. If you choose to work ahead on your résumé, please see Week 5 Project for the requirements for it.
In your discussions with your classmates you could:
Share tips on doing research on the Internet and in the Library. Check out others’ Web sites and let them know your opinion on their credibility and why you feel that way. You can also share good resources on this topic with others.
Remember to respond substantively to a minimum of two other students and to your instructor.
Work on different ways to paraphrase and try to practice citing sources by helping others when you see potential errors.
Remember to respond substantively to a minimum of two other students and to your instructor and to include references of URLs to Internet resources you found helpful (tell us how they were helpful), page names for the online lectures, page numbers for the textbook, and/or specific examples in Microsoft Word, sharing the steps and tools you used.