Benchmark- Capstone Project Change Proposal

Benchmark- Capstone Project Change Proposal

The wellness of a population’s health using improved patient safety protocols implores healthcare workers (HCWs), especially nurses, to develop evidence-based practice interventions to reduce and prevent the occurrence of adverse events like hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and medication administration errors (MAEs), among others.

These adverse events lead to poor patient outcomes, increase the overall cost of care and disease burden, and lower the quality of care delivered by healthcare professionals. Hospital-acquired infections are among the leading healthcare concerns affecting patient safety and quality of care. Many patients suffer from these infections, resulting in lengthened hospital stays, increased cost of care, and death in extreme circumstances.

Nurse practitioners and other healthcare professionals transmit infections to patients through poor hand hygiene measures and protocols (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017). As such, nurses and other providers should leverage evidence-based practice (EBP) interventions to reduce and prevent hospital-acquired infections and guarantee quality care.

Using evidence-based practice interventions allows these providers to offer better services through increased quality, increased engagement of patients and their preferences, and leveraging clinical experience and expertise.

The purpose of this evidence-based practice project proposal paper is to discuss how nurses in pediatric settings can integrate hand hygiene measures and protocols to reduce and prevent the occurrence of hospital-acquired infections. These measures and protocols include handwashing using soap and water alongside hand sanitizers compared to handwashing with water and soap alone.

Problem Statement

Hospital-acquired infections or nosocomial infections are newly acquired infections that patients contract during their stay in hospital settings or facilities. The transmission of nosocomial infections happens through healthcare workers, patients, hospital equipment like catheters, and interventional procedures that include catheterization.

Studies demonstrate that healthcare workers, including nurse practitioners, infect patients when they fail to adhere to effective hand hygiene measures like handwashing with soap or using alcohol-based sanitizers and hand rubs when handling and interacting with patients in the care process (Liana 2021).

Using evidence-based practice interventions using the PICOT question is important in assisting nurses in implementing better practices to reduce the susceptibility of patients acquiring nosocomial infections that adversely affect overall care delivery and quality. These infections lead to increased length of stay in hospitals, a rise in the cost of healthcare, and cause deaths, especially in critical care settings like pediatric units (Setty et al., 2019).

Hand hygiene measures that include handwashing with soap and water alongside sanitizer will improve patient safety among healthcare workers. The implication is that healthcare workers will adhere to these measures in pediatric settings to reduce hospital-acquired infections within six months and improve quality outcomes.

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PICOT Statement

Population– Healthcare workers in pediatric settings

Intervention-Hand Hygiene using handwashing with soap and water and sanitizer

Comparison-Handwashing with soap and water alone

Outcome– Reduced Hospital-acquired infections

Time– in Six months

Refined PICOT Question

The refined PICOT question for the EBP project is “Among healthcare workers in pediatric setting (P), does hand hygiene practices that include handwashing with soap and water alongside hand sanitizer (I) compared to handwashing with soap and water alone (C) reduce hospital acquired infections (O) within six months (T)?”

Organizational Culture and Readiness

An organization’s culture is essential in implementing changes, and it impacts its overall vision, mission, and values and employees’ perception of embracing new ways of executing tasks. A culture entails employees with strong norms and values, management, and approaches to doing things.

A culture that involves employees possessing strong values and norms and encourages an open-door policy with a decentralized approach is important in achieving set change objectives in an organization (Real et al., 2017). To implement this EBP project proposal effectively, pediatric healthcare settings and practitioners should use a decentralized organizational and leadership structure.

The model is effective in enhancing the motivation of subordinates and enhancing growth and increased diversification. Decentralization in healthcare organizations leads to better communication and the adoption of innovative practices, ideas, and strategies to improve the quality of care. Through decentralization, the management leads a transformational approach to enhance agility and respond to new and best practices in care delivery.

Implementing this EBP project proposal requires an organizational culture focusing on patient-centered care delivery. Through being patient-centered, an organization can support change programs to improve patient safety, quality, and access while minimizing the occurrence of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Increasing patient engagement and promoting inter-professional collaboration create a competitive advantage for healthcare organizations.

Evaluating an organization’s readiness for change based on its culture is essential in implementing evidence-based practice projects. Readiness demonstrates how organizational members are prepared to implement and embrace change, behaviorally and psychologically. Dearing (2018) opines that readiness is a psychological state of mind that shows commitment to a certain course of action.

As such, this EBP project proposal will leverage the Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that assesses an organization’s readiness to promote and enhance the use of global health interventions. Through the tool, organizations identify substantive capacities and strengths that are present and require one to attain their set objective.

In this case, pediatric settings that aim to implement this EBP recommendation should demonstrate exemplary capacities in their attributes and have a great and influential culture based on their missions, purposes, and better values (De la Parrilla et al.., 2020). The capacity assessment tool looks at the various capabilities, including human resources, processes, financial resources, and systems, as critical components of readiness for change implementation.

Ready organizations possess sufficient strengths that include having the best skills, effective communication and adequate resources, availability of a sufficient nurse workforce, and effective engagement of their stakeholders.

Organizational readiness also evaluates the process and systems that require improvement to effectively implement the requisite changes (Vax et al., 2021). For instance, the improvement that pediatric care settings require includes their patient handling process, the need for healthcare workers to adhere to hand hygiene measures and protocols, and the delivery of patient-centered quality care.

The organization will need quality improvement and collaborative approaches to enhance implementation. These organizations will also require quality data assessment tools for better and more accurate analysis of their respective data (Dearing, 2018). The readiness will also include the engagement of stakeholders and the integration of information and communication technologies to ensure that all components to implement the project proposal are present.

Using selected technologies, the project team and practitioners will pursue outcomes based on patient needs through enhanced alerts, reminders, and notifications on the need to comply with set hand hygiene protocols and measures that include effective handwashing and the use of hand sanitizers to reduce hospital-acquired infections in pediatric settings.

• Review the feedback on the change proposal professional presentation and make required adjustments.
• Present your evidence-based intervention and change proposal to an interprofessional audience of leaders and stakeholders.
• Be prepared to answer questions and accept feedback.

After presenting your capstone project change proposal, write a 250-350 word summary of the presentation. Include a description of the changes that your preceptor suggested before your presentation and how you incorporated that feedback.

Describe how this interprofessional collaboration improved the effectiveness of your presentation. Include a description of the feedback and questions from your audience after your presentation and how this experience will affect your professional practice in the future.

While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected. Documentation of sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide located in the Student Success Center.

You are not required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite.

Preceptor comments: You did a good job. You should have more than two references, however.