Prospectus Checklist

Walden University

Manual for STAFF EDUCATION Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Scholarly Project

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Prior to beginning the work of any DNP scholarly project, Walden students will complete the steps of prospectus development and approval. Once the prospectus is approved the committee will be formed, proposal developed and oral proposal defense completed per the DNP Project Process Guide. The ethics approval process begins during proposal development but can only be finalized after the proposal defense is entered into MyDR/Taskstream. Principles of Staff Education There is no single model for development and delivery of Staff Education, as clinical needs, organizational structures and budget will guide the concepts and processes.

 The program must include a well-developed framework for effective programming and evaluation for the adult learners within the context of the setting.

 Evaluation must be planned and should be formative or iterative in nature, with ongoing evaluation occurring throughout the planning stages.

 Key stakeholders should be included in the process.  A process for summative or impact evaluation must be included that demonstrates

outcomes related to the identified Staff Education program objectives.  The evaluation should identify the programs impact on social change as an

outcome.

Definition of Staff Education Projects Staff education may include nurse residencies, orientation, in-service education, and continuing education of professional staff. Walden requires that a partner organization oversee the staff education activities. Walden is able to oversee the evaluation data collection, if the site wishes (see IRB steps below). Programs may be multi-disciplinary in nature, meaning that other professional healthcare clinicians may attend and benefit from the content. Staff education is usually developed to meet a need identified by an organization or clinical practice setting to improve patient care, achieve standards of practice or to meet regulatory guidelines. DNP students may not develop Scholarly Projects that involve patients, families, or pre- professional students as their target population.. It is important to understand the expectations for accomplishing a Staff Education Project in the context of the DNP Scholarly Project. Scholarly Projects related to Staff Education are aligned with the DNP Essentials. Doctor of Nursing Program Capstone Resources https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/researchcenter/osra/dnp Purpose of Staff Education

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For the DNP Nurse, Staff Education is often used to help inform and improve knowledge and skills using current evidence-based practices. Steps for Developing a Staff Education Project There are numerous instructional design models available for developing education programs. One of the most common is the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation). The ADDIE model is discussed in chapter 2 of the Jeffery, Longo, & Nienaber required staff education textbook under required resources in this document. Planning

• Meet with committee chair to explore topic and narrow down focus to select a project that meets the requirements of a DNP staff education module

• Analyze need and establish the criteria for the Staff Education program using available existing data from site, literature, or theoretical support.

• Discuss needs and staff education program goals with organizational leadership (via informal conversation rather than survey/interview)

• Obtain a commitment of support from organizational leadership • Identify (and confirm) content expert(s) to review educational materials. • Research the literature for relevant teaching materials or content that address the

program goals. Unless literature has historical relevance, all literature should be within fives years of date of completion.

• Formulate specific learning objectives that are measurable and reasonable for the project selected • Develop the Staff Education program, including the content and the delivery

strategy using appropriate instructional methods and theoretical framework (teaching/learning, adult education, and nursing theories) Currently adopted educational materials may be adapted for use in this project with the permission of the author/s.

• Seek appropriate ethics approval at the site and through Walden IRB (see below). Implementation

• Verify the Staff Education program plan with organizational leadership and end- users via formative or iterative review

• Revise the Staff Education program plan based on formative or iterative review • Present the revised Staff Education Program to organizational leadership and

end-users/key stakeholders and discuss to validate content and ensure usability • Secure evidence-based resources to implement the Staff Education program • Finalize development of the Staff Education program including a second

anonymous questionnaire review with organizational leadership and end-users • Support the organization in the recruitment of staff for the education program,

unless the program is required by the organization. Note that the site, not Walden, will be overseeing the education program so all recruitment materials must reflect that.

Evaluation

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• Review chapters 5 and 6 of the Jeffery, Longo, & Nienaber required staff education textbook to develop evaluation methods and materials

• Have the participants complete a summative or impact evaluation (pre and post-test) of their learning based on an anonymous paper-based or online questionnaire that is directly related to the identified learning objectives. If a validated questionnaire is available, that should be used, as opposed to the student creating a new questionnaire.

• When possible, it is recommended that the student apply for, and receive approval for continuing education credits from an approved provider.

• If providing continuing education credits utilize evaluation methods provided by the provider.

• Determine the effectiveness of the Staff Education program through analysis of the summative or impact evaluation (pre and post-test).

• Analysis procedures used should be aligned with practice-focused question(s) (e.g., descriptive statistics or inferential statistics to determine the difference between the two means ).If inferential statistics are utilized limitations must be noted.

• Communicate the results and recommendations to organizational leadership and program stakeholders

• Present findings through DNP final project following DNP template and Checklist which are submitted with the paper in MyDR/Taskstream.

The doctoral project is grounded in a focused application of related concepts, models, and/or theories consistent with the DNP Checklist.

Obtaining ethics approval in compliance with Institutional Review Board (IRB) requirements All doctoral projects are required to have ethics approval from the university’s IRB, even those that might not be considered “research.” The DNP program has set up a blanket ethics pre-approval for Staff Education Doctoral Projects falling within the parameters described in the blue table below, as per the pre-approved Site Approval Form (Appendix A) and the Consent Form for Anonymous Questionnaires (Appendix B). Only Staff Education projects involving public data, the literature, anonymous questionnaires from site staff, and archival data from the organization(s) are eligible for the blanket pre- approval. Edits to Appendices A and B are not permitted. If a student needs to customize anything about either of the two appendices or add more data points (such as observations, or interviews), then the blanket approval cannot be utilized (and the student should follow the standard IRB approval steps in the DNP Project Process Guide. Steps for ethics approval: These steps can be completed any time after (a) the chair has uploaded the proposal into MyDR for URR review, and (b) the student has identified a site.

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Step 1: To quality for pre-approved status, each doctoral student completing a Staff Education project is responsible for completing the web-based Form A (the same form that all DNP students use to start the ethics approval process). In the first page of Form A, the student needs to indicate that s/he will be conducting a project that falls within the pre-approved parameters for a Staff Education project and this will cause the form to skip the questions that are not applicable. The student will also need to enter the details for the partner site(s). The final page in Form A will provide instructions for next steps, based on the responses the student enters into Form A. Step 2: For Staff Education projects on the pre-approved track, the instructions on the final page of Form A will indicate that the student can either upload the signed Site Approval Form (Appendix A) into the form or email it to [email protected] at a later date. Note that the Consent Form (Appendix B) doesn’t need to be sent to IRB because it has already been pre-approved and doesn’t need to be signed.

Step 3: Once Form A is received by the IRB, an IRB staff member will respond within 10 business days to the student and chair with either (a) an email confirmation that the ethical standards have been met (i.e., the data collection procedures fall within the pre-approved parameters), or (b) a request for more information. For certain sites (within Department of Defense, international contexts, universities, or research hospital systems), additional documentation and compliance steps may be required by the site, so the IRB staff will work with the student to meet all of the site’s requirements. The IRB would continue to correspond with the student until all ethical issues are addressed. Once (a) occurs, the student can focus on working toward proposal approval. Doctoral students with project data falling outside the pre-approved parameters will be directed to obtain IRB approval in the standard manner, which is likely to take a minimum of 4 weeks longer.

Step 4: At this point, to finalize ethics approval, a student just needs to have the project design approved via the proposal defense. Thus, once the student successfully defends the proposal, the MyDR system will automatically copy the IRB on the proposal approval notice and that will trigger the IRB to reach out to the student via email to confirm whether/how the data collection plan might have changed as a result of the proposal defense. If changes to the data collection plan were made, then the IRB will need updated versions of the ethics application materials. If the student confirms no changes were made, then the IRB will email the student and chair a formal ethics approval notification which signifies that the student may begin collecting data.

The doctoral student must be actively enrolled in the doctoral project course to receive final IRB approval notification and must remain enrolled while completing

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the project, including data collection. IRB approval is not valid if a student is on a leave of absence or otherwise not enrolled.

A Staff Education project is also required to adhere to the following ethical requirements:

 In the doctoral project documents, the doctoral student must change the name of any partner organizations and generalize the location(s) so that the organizations are not identifiable. It is important that the doctoral student redact any information that could lead a reader to identify an organization’s identity. If the organization itself wishes to publicize the project, that will be the organization’s judgment call. However, it is not appropriate for a doctoral student to make the partner site’s name known in the doctoral project document that will be published in ProQuest. The doctoral student is required to change the name of the organization in all materials (including drafts shared with peers and faculty members) to protect the organization’s identity. In some cases, it might be appropriate for the doctoral student to maintain confidentiality by removing key pieces of evidence/data that might give away the organization’s identity. The doctoral student should direct questions to [email protected] when these situations arise.

 The doctoral student is responsible for complying with all of the organization’s

policies. This includes, but is not limited to, site IRB policies and site resource use policies (pertaining to copying/ printing materials, etc.).

 The doctoral student may not collect any type of data from patients or patients’

family members for this type of project. If at some point the doctoral student wishes to pursue that type of data collection, s/he will need to follow the standard university procedures to obtain prior approval from the Walden University IRB.

 Collecting data from human subjects without appropriate IRB approval can result in invalidation of the data and dismissal from the program.

 The doctoral student is responsible for ensuring that no proprietary, sensitive, or

confidential information is disclosed in the doctoral project document. The doctoral student is responsible for learning about the organization’s policies on use of the organization’s resources (including email addresses, printing materials, etc.) for individual projects. Many organizations have restrictions on use of company resources for educational projects.

Other student obligations will be outlined in the final page of Form A. Faculty supervision requirements for Staff Education projects include the following:

 The supervising faculty member will ensure that the student properly requests any project design changes by emailing [email protected].

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 The supervising faculty member will ensure that the student promptly reports any unexpected or otherwise significant adverse events and general problems within 1 week by emailing [email protected].

 The supervising faculty member will report any possible noncompliance on the part of the student by emailing [email protected].

 The supervising faculty member’s supervision role continues as long as the student remains enrolled in the present course with the faculty member.

Data Sources that have been Pre-approved by IRB for Staff Education Doctoral Projects

Public data: Reports, websites

Media coverage, publicly disseminated reports, public websites, any information that is available to the public

Literature as Data Books, peer-reviewed articles, and other bodies of written knowledge that communicate theories and findings about practices that are relevant to the student’s doctoral project

Anonymous Questionnaires from Staff

Using the pre-approved Consent Form for Anonymous Questionnaires in Appendix B, students may conduct paper or online surveys of staff members as long as they are anonymous. If pre and post testing is used, then a coding system may be used (instead of names) to link a person’s pretest and posttest score.

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Partner organization’s internal data*: operational records and other artifacts

Partner organization’s de-identified records* including: aggregate** patient records, operational records pertaining to staff training and delivery of care, meeting minutes, digital/audio/video recordings created by site, training materials, protocols, manuals, reports, agreements, questionnaires that were administered under auspices of site as part of quality improvement (QI) operations, and other internal documents that the site has released to the student for use in the doctoral project

*as the partner organization’s leadership deems fit to share with student (as per confidentiality terms in this guide) **Students are only pre-approved to analyze patient records that have been aggregated via asking a site contact for high level summary data (without the student actually looking at patient records). Examples:

 Citing rates of certain diagnoses: “Before the new protocol was implemented, 20% of asthma cases were readmitted within 30 days. After the protocol was implemented, re-admissions went down to 10%.”

 Citing patterns among patients: “At this facility, males are twice as likely to be admitted for [X diagnosis] than females.”

 Press Ganey scores can be analyzed.  Patient satisfaction reports can be analyzed.

The table below includes those data tools that do NOT fall under the IRB’s pre- approval. Any student wishing to analyze one of the data sources below must go through the standard IRB process to gain formal IRB approval independently.

Data Sources that are NOT Pre-approved by IRB for Staff Education Doctoral Projects

(These all require the student to obtain IRB review/approval independently via the standard process.)

Patient Records with identifiers

While students may in some cases access patient records during the practicum in support of patient care, the IRB pre-approval does not cover students accessing patient records for the purpose of the doctoral project analysis.

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Interviews or Focus Groups

The pre-approval does not cover interviews or focus groups.

Data Collection from Patients

The pre-approval does not cover posing questions to patients via any method (questionnaires, interviews, focus groups).

Video as Data

The pre-approval does not cover filming of events to observe behaviors, study environments and processes, or capture products and/or outcomes.

Observations of specific individuals

The pre-approval does not include collection of observational data.

References

Required Jeffery, A.D., Longo, M.A, & Nienaber, A. (2015). Staff educator’s guide to professional development: Assessing and enhancing nursing competency. Indianapolis: IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.

Recommended

Abruzzese, R. S. (1992). Nursing staff development: Strategies for success. St. Louis: Mosby Year Book.

American Nurses Association. (1976). Guidelines for staff development: continuing

education in nursing. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 7(2), 37- 46. doi: 10.3928/0022-0124-19760301-09

Boone, E. J., Safrit, R. D., & Jones, J. (2002). Developing programs in adult education: A

conceptual programming model. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Branch, R. M. (2009). Instructional design: The ADDIE approach. New York: Springer. Dirksen, J. (2016). Design for how people learn. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Donato, E., Lightfoot, N., Carter, L., & Macewan, L. (2016). Interprofessional education

in Canadian nursing programs and implications for continuing education. Journal of Professional, Continuing, and Online Education, 1. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18741/P9MW20

Duteau, J. (2012). Making a difference: The value of preceptorship programs in nursing

education. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing 43(1), 37-43. doi: 10.3928/00220124-20110615-01

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Fisher, C. A., Rietschel, M. J., & O'Neil, C. A. (2014). Developing Online Learning Environments in Nursing Education. Springer.

Gormley, D. (2013). Considerations when developing online continuing education programs in nursing. Journal for Nurses in Professional Development, 29(3), 149- 151. doi: 10.1097/NND.0b013e318291c47d

Iwasiw, C., Goldenberg, D., & Andrusyszyn, M. (2008). Curriculum development in nursing education. Jones & Bartlett.

Jones-Schenk J. (2016). Think competencies, not hours, when planning your next education initiative. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 47(8), 350- 352. doi: 10.3928/00220124-20160715-04

Keating, S. B. (2015). Curriculum development and evaluation in nursing.

Kemp, J. E., Smellie, D. C., & Kemp, J. E. (1989). Planning, producing, and using instructional media. New York: Harper & Row.

Knowles, M., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2005). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development. San Diego: Elsevier.

Merriam, S. B. (2008). Third update on adult learning theory. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.

Rossi, P. H., Lipsey, M. W., & Freeman, H. E. (2004). Evaluation: A systematic approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Schindler J. (2016). Meeting education needs of flexible staffing: Begin with the end in

mind. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 47(9), 390-392. doi: 10.3928/00220124-20160817-03

Scope and standards of practice for nursing professional development. (2000).

Washington, D.C.: American Nurses Association. Sweeney, N. M., Saarmann, L., Flagg, J. & Seidman, R. (2008). The keys to successful

online continuing education programs for nurses. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 39(1), 34-41. doi: 10.3928/00220124-20080101-09

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Appendix A: Site Approval Form for Staff Education Doctoral Project Name of Doctoral Student: _________________________________________________

Name of Doctoral Student’s Partner Organization: ______________________________

Date: ________

The doctoral student named above is involved in Staff Education that will be conducted under the auspices of the organization named above. This form is the student’s formal request to evaluate the staff education by administering anonymous staff questionnaires and analyzing internal, de-identified site records that this form’s signer deems appropriate to release for the student’s doctoral project. This permission to use the organization’s data pertains only to this doctoral project and not to the student’s future scholarly projects or research (which would need a separate request for approval). As per DNP program requirements, the student will publish a scholarly report of this Staff Education project in ProQuest as a doctoral capstone (with site and individual identifiers withheld), as per the following ethical standards:

a. In all reports (including drafts shared with peers and faculty members), the student is required to maintain confidentiality by removing names and key pieces of evidence/data that might disclose the organization’s identity or an individual’s identity or inappropriately divulge proprietary details. If the organization itself wishes to publicize the findings of this project, that will be the organization’s judgment call. b. The student will be responsible for complying with the above-named organization’s policies and requirements regarding data collection (including the need for the organization’s IRB review/approval, if applicable). c. Via a Consent Form for Anonymous Questionnaires, the student will describe to staff members how the data will be used in the doctoral project and how the stakeholders’ autonomy and privacy will be protected.

Approval signature from site representative: ____________________________________

Name of signer (print legibly): ______________________________________________

Position of signer within organization (must be authorized by the organization to approve

the questionnaires/data release described above): _______________________________

Signer’s contact information: _______________________________________________

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Appendix B: Consent Form for Anonymous Questionnaires

To be given to the staff member prior to collecting questionnaire responses—obtaining a “consent signature” is not appropriate for this type of questionnaire and providing respondents with anonymity is required. You are invited to take part in an evaluation for the staff education doctoral project that I am conducting. Questionnaire Procedures: If you agree to take part, I will be asking you to provide your responses anonymously, to help reduce bias and any sort of pressure to respond a certain way. Staff members’ questionnaire responses will be analyzed as part of my doctoral project, along with any archival data, reports, and documents that the organization’s leadership deems fit to share. Voluntary Nature of the Project: This project is voluntary. If you decide to join the project now, you can still change your mind later. Risks and Benefits of Being in the Project: Being in this project would not pose any risks beyond those of typical daily professional activities. This project’s aim is to provide data and insights to support the organization’s success. Privacy: I might know that you completed a questionnaire but I will not know who provided which responses. Any reports, presentations, or publications related to this study will share general patterns from the data, without sharing the identities of individual respondents or partner organization(s). The questionnaire data will be kept for a period of at least 5 years, as required by my university. Contacts and Questions: If you want to talk privately about your rights in relation to this project, you can call my university’s Advocate via the phone number 612-312-1210. Walden University’s ethics approval number for this study is (Student will need to complete Form A in order to obtain an ethics approval number). Before you start the questionnaire, please share any questions or concerns you might have.