Assignment:Skills/Strategies Used Effect Change

Introductory Information

This activity and paper will focus on leadership, including the skills and strategies used by successful leaders to effect change within the healthcare delivery system. Leaders who work with diverse groups or teams must be adept at organizing, advancing change, promoting innovation, and resolving conflict.

This assignment addresses the following Student Program Learning Outcomes:

Apply principles of leadership to advocate for the unique role of the nursing profession within the healthcare system.

This assignment addresses the following Course Outcome:
1.Differentiate leadership and management styles, skills and practice behaviors across the health care environment.

To successfully complete this assignment, students must similate attendance to a professional meeting to observe leadership characteristics, styles, and the application of leadership theory and (b) write a scholarly paper that includes a meeting summary, an analysis of the leader, and a critical reflection on leader effectiveness and implications for personal practice.

This assignment will account for 30% of your total course grade. This assignment will meet the requirement of 20 clinical hours. Please refer to the scoring rubric for the assessment criteria.

Course Assignment

In a 10-12 page paper (with title page and reference page included), please address the following:
I.Professional Organization Meeting or Conference Overview

Similate Attending a professional meeting related to a healthcare issue with implications for nursing practice. Examples include (but are not limited to) the following: (1) professional nursing organization (New York State Nurses Association, Association of Perioperative Nurses, etc.); (2) healthcare organization or place of employment discussing policy or procedures impacting nursing practice (a unit meeting does not qualify); (3) legislative meeting discussing safe staffing, mandatory Bachelor of Science in Nursing, etc.; (4) professional nursing conference. It may be helpful to create an observation instrument (including typical leader characteristics, approaches, and communication processes, among other things) to help you take notes during the meeting about topics related to this assignment.

Assignment:Skills/Strategies Used Effect Change

Assignment:Skills/Strategies Used Effect Change

Provide an overview of the meeting you attended by detailing each of the following:
a.Sponsoring Organization
b.Title of Meeting
c.Purpose or Goal of Meeting
d.Setting / Context
e.Presenter – describe the person leading the meeting. Include the person’s title, role, and affiliation within the organization.
f.Participants – describe the general characteristics of those attending the meeting or conference (e.g., nursing staff, medical staff, clinicians, other employees of the healthcare organization; members of a quality improvement committee, legislative representatives across the state, specialized nurses in perioperative care, Nurse Practitioners’ group, and nurse educators).
g.Topic addressed – describe the healthcare topic or issue presented, including two scholarly, peer-reviewed articles to explain the underlying premise and impact the topic or issue has on nursing leadership, practice, work environments, or professionalism.
h.Student role – briefly describe your role at this meeting (e.g., observer, active participant, panelist, employee).

II.Analysis
a.Leadership Characteristics and Style
i.Describe the leadership characteristics demonstrated by the leader. Provide at least two examples to support your description.
ii.Describe the leadership theoretical approach (es) the leader appeared to demonstrate. Provide at least two examples to support your description.
b.Communication Style
i.Describe the communication process utilized by the leader. Provide at least two examples to support your description.
ii.If conflict or disagreement was evident, describe what the leader did to reach consensus.
c.Critical Reflections
i.Explain your perceptions of the leader’s effectiveness, given the context (organization), content (issues presented), audience, and your analysis of the leader’s characteristics, style, and communication style.
III.Implications for Professional Nursing Practice a.Reflect on your personal experience of attending the meeting and observing this leader, and discuss the insights you have gained form this learning activity.
b.Explain what you may have done similarly *and* differently if you were in this leader’s position. Be sure to support your answer.
c.Predict how this experience will influence your ability effect positive change in the future.
d.Discuss how this experience has influenced your own definition of “leadership.”

Additional Expectations
•In the “Analysis” and “Implications for Professional Nursing Practice” sections, be sure to integrate course concepts and terminology in your descriptions and explanations.
•Integrate 6 current (within 5 years) scholarly references.
•Format the paper using APA guidelines for title page, organization, citations within text, and reference list.
•Only the “Critical Reflections” and “Implications for Professional Nursing Practice” sections may be written in the first person.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

 

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.