Identify two areas of nursing practice, which evidence-based practice has improved patient outcomes. State the study and its impact on patient care. How have these findings changed your nursing practice? Please support your response with a minimum of two supporting peer reviewed articles.
Discussion: Addressing an Unmet Need Through Strategic Planning
Challenges can seem ever present in the health care field. Problems related to the quality of patient care, financial matters, technology, and interdisciplinary collaboration, for example, are often evident in organizations and professional groups.
In your role as a nurse leader-manager, it is important to consider challenges and how these translate into unmet needs. You can then create valuable change by addressing these unmet needs through strategic planning.
Through this Discussion, you may distinguish the focus for your Course Project. Your instructor and colleagues will provide feedback to help you refine your idea as you move forward.
To prepare:
Consider the information presented by Dr. Carol Huston in this week’s media program. Think about the process of moving from the identification of an unmet need through the development, implementation, and evaluation of a strategic plan.
Reflect on the initial thinking about trends and unmet needs in nursing and health care that you addressed in Week 5.
Consider how the information in this week’s Learning Resources deepens and expands your understanding of these trends and unmet needs in relation to the strategic planning process.
Proceed with planning for your Course Project as follows:
Select an unmet need that affects a specific group, unit, or organization.
Deepen your understanding of this group, unit, or organization by examining the stated mission, vision, and values, if possible.
Analyze historical data related to the unmet need, and review the evidence in the literature. Use this information to engage in forecasting.
Consider which stakeholders should be included in the strategic planning process.
Begin to formulate a vision for addressing this need at the organizational or systems level. (Note: Although not required for this Discussion, you will need to develop a strategic goal for your Course Project.)

Care Clinic Scenario: The Executive Team of Care Clinic prides itself in the care that is provided to the community of Summerville, Florida. The Clinic is known for holistic approach to the individuals served at the clinic as well as presenting various community outreach programs. Annually, the Executive Team of Care Clinic reviews the client satisfaction benchmark results related to client service and quality indicators. The scores have substantially decreased in the past 12 months in the categories of client satisfaction and quality care.
To assist in understanding the quality issues related to client care occurring within the Care Clinic, you are provided with two videos of client situations that have been recorded using Second Life. You are also required to enter Second Life to observe actions and conversations occurring within the Care Clinic. When viewing the videos and participating within the Care Clinic located in Second Life, consider yourself to be the manager and identify quality care issues consistent with decreasing client satisfaction scores. From your leadership perspective, determine how the declining benchmarks can be addressed and improved. Discuss the actions/changes that need to be implemented in order to improve the satisfaction scores and attained Care Clinic quality outcomes.
The Care Clinic Improvement Project will need to be completed by the end of week six of this course and requires that each of the following areas to be addressed.
1. Identify ONE satisfaction benchmark that you will be addressing and why this benchmark has been selected. Select the ONE client satisfaction benchmark from the following list:
a. Decrease in client satisfaction scores related to courtesy and friendliness of staff at the Care Clinic.
b. Decrease in client satisfaction scores related to staff explaining discharge instructions in a manner that is understandable to the client/client.
c. Decrease in the quality nursing care related to interventions provided to clients at the Clinic.
2. Describe the leadership dynamics related to how the improvement/change project will be managed.
3. Identify the change model that will be used in addressing the selected benchmark.
4. Describe the course of action/change.