Interview a leader of your choice who has experience with creating and managing budgets, and write a 3-5 page analysis of your findings from the interview.

Introduction

Note: Complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.

Business acumen, including financial management skills, is a key competency for nurse leaders, and a primary responsibility for many is the development and management of operating and capital budgets.

For this assessment, you will speak with a leader of your choice who has experience with creating and managing budgets, learn about that person’s approach to budget management, and consider techniques or strategies you may emulate when you create and manage budgets.

Nurse leaders must be well-versed in the fundamentals of health care economics. A firm understanding of these concepts is essential in order to examine national trends and diverse health care organizations. At the organizational level, health care economics operate in a manner very similar to other competitive industries and businesses.

Within any organization, regardless of size, nurse leaders must understand the purpose and complexity of building a solid budget. Nurse leaders must be able to recognize the organizational or unit goals and then be adept and competent in the planning, designing, and defending a budget to meet those needs.

Note: Complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.

Preparation

You are the nurse manager of a new urgent care clinic, and one of your first tasks is to prepare next year’s operating budget. Like many nurses, you have had little or no direct experience with the budgeting process and realize that financial management is not one of your strengths as a leader. Consequently, you have decided that you need to reach out for help from someone in the facility with budgeting experience and financial management expertise who can offer you help and insight.

Note: Remember that you can submit all of, or a portion of, your draft analysis to Smarthinking for feedback, before you submit the final version for this assessment. However, be mindful of the turnaround time of 24–48 hours for receiving feedback, if you plan on using this free service.

As you prepare to complete this assessment, you may want to think about other related issues to deepen your understanding or broaden your viewpoint. You are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of your professional community. Note that these questions are for your own development and exploration and do not need to be completed or submitted as part of your assessment.

Capital and operating budgets each play a major role in the financial expenditures of nursing units.

• What is the purpose of each type of budget?
• How does managing these two types of budgets differ?
• What financial management techniques are common to both types?

Reflect on your experience with either type of budget.

• How have one or the other of these two budgets affected the provision of care in your organization or unit?

 

Requirements

Interview

Conduct an interview with your site supervisor, or other nurse leader whom you consider to be a mentor in the area of health care finance. Discuss their experience with operations and capital budgets in their current or previous role. Explore the following topics in your interview:

• Their experience managing an operating budget.
• Their approach to managing productivity within the parameters of the budget.
• Their approach to oversight of the appropriate use and availability of equipment and supplies.
• The experience of managing a capital budget.
• How managing a capital budget differs from managing an operating budget.
• Their application of finance principles to fulfill the organization’s mission and goals.

Analysis

Note: The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the assessment scoring guide. Be sure that your written analysis addresses each point, at a minimum. You may also want to read the Guiding Questions: Mentor Interview [DOCX] to better understand how each criterion will be assessed.

Prepare a written analysis of your findings from the interview, supplemented by your own research and evaluation of budget management techniques.

• Compare the process of managing an operating budget to that of managing a capital budget.
• Describe the process of allocating resources for labor, equipment, and services.
• Describe an effective approach that contributes to planning for profitability and fiscal success.
• Evaluate the nurse leader’s approach to budget management.
• Write clearly and concisely, using correct grammar and mechanics.
• Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support your assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using current APA style.

Additional Requirements

Format your analysis using APA style.

• Use the APA Style Paper Tutorial [DOCX] linked above. Be sure to include:
  • A title page and reference page. An abstract is not required.
  • A running head on all pages.
  • Appropriate section headings.
  • A minimum of five properly formatted citations and references.
• Your analysis should be 3–5 pages in length, not including the title page and reference page.

GRADING RUBRIC:

1-  Compare the process of managing an operations budget to that of managing a capital budget. 

Passing Grade:  Compares the process of managing an operating budget to that of managing a capital budget, and identifies knowledge gaps, unknowns, missing information, unanswered questions, or areas of uncertainty. 

2-  Describe the process of allocating resources for labor, equipment, and services. 

Passing Grade:  Describes the process of allocating resources for labor, equipment, and services, and identifies assumptions underlying the process. 

3-  Describe an effective approach that contributes to planning for profitability and fiscal success. 

Passing Grade:  Describes an effective approach that contributes to planning for profitability and fiscal success, and impartially considers potential merits of an alternative approach. 

4-  Evaluate a nurse leader’s approach to budget management. 

Passing Grade:  Evaluates a nurse leader’s approach to budget management, citing one or more relevant resources that provide criteria for budget evaluation. 

5-  Write clearly and concisely, using correct grammar and mechanics. 

Passing Grade:  Writes clearly and concisely. Grammar and mechanics are error-free. 

6-  Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support your assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using current APA style. 

Passing Grade:  Integrates relevant, credible, and convincing sources of evidence to support assertions. Sources are current, and citations and references are error-free. 

 

Nature offers many examples of specialization and collaboration. Ant colonies and bee hives are but two examples of nature’s sophisticated organizations. Each thrives because their members specialize by tasks, divide labor, and collaborate to ensure food, safety, and general well-being of the colony or hive.

Of course, humans don’t fare too badly in this regard either. And healthcare is a great example. As specialists in the collection, access, and application of data, nurse informaticists collaborate with specialists on a regular basis to ensure that appropriate data is available to make decisions and take actions to ensure the general well-being of patients.

In this Discussion, you will reflect on your own observations of and/or experiences with informaticist collaboration. You will also propose strategies for how these collaborative experiences might be improved.

To Prepare:

• Review the Resources and reflect on the evolution of nursing informatics from a science to a nursing specialty.
• Consider your experiences with nurse Informaticists or technology specialists within your healthcare organization.

Post a description of experiences or observations about how nurse informaticists and/or data or technology specialists interact with other professionals within your healthcare organization. Suggest at least one strategy on how these interactions might be improved. Be specific and provide examples. Then, explain the impact you believe the continued evolution of nursing informatics as a specialty and/or the continued emergence of new technologies might have on professional interactions.

 Details:

In this assignment, you will be completing a comprehensive health screening and history on a young adult. To complete this assignment, do the following:

Select an adolescent or young adult client on whom to perform a health screening and history. Students who do not work in an acute setting may “practice” these skills with a patient, community member, neighbor, friend, colleague, or loved one.

Complete the “Health History and Screening of an Adolescent or Young Adult Client” worksheet.

Complete the assignment as outlined on the worksheet, including:

1. Biographical data
2. Past health history
3. Family history: Obstetrics history (if applicable) and well young adult behavioral health history screening
4. Review of systems
5. All components of the health history
6. Three nursing diagnoses for this client based on the health history and screening (one actual nursing diagnosis, one wellness nursing diagnosis, and one “risk for” nursing diagnosis)
7. Rationale for the choice of each nursing diagnosis.
8. A wellness plan for the adolescent/young adult client, using the three nursing diagnoses you have identified.

Format the write-up in a manner that is easily read, computer-generated, neat, and without spelling errors. Use correct acronyms or abbreviations when indicated.

While APA format is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected and in-text citations and references should be presented using APA documentation guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are not required to submit this assignment to Turnitin.

NRS-434VN-R-HealthScreeningandHistoryAdolescentAssignment-Student.docx 

  

Logistic Regression in Nursing Practice

To prepare:

Review the three articles in this week’s Learning Resources and evaluate their use of logistic regression. Select one article that interests you to examine more closely in this Discussion

Critically analyze the article you selected considering the following questions:

What are the goals and purposes of the research study the article describes?

How is logistic regression used in the study? What are the results of its use?

What other quantitative and statistical methods could be used to address the research issue discussed in the article?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the study?

How could the weaknesses of the study be remedied?

How could findings from this study contribute to evidence-based practice, the nursing profession, or society?

Post 4 paragraph that addresses the following:

1.In the first line of your posting, identify the article you examined, providing its correct APA citation.

2. Post your critical analysis of the article as outlined above.

3.Propose potential remedies to address the weaknesses of each study.

4.Analyze the importance of this study to evidence-based practice, the nursing profession, or society.

Provide 3 references

1.Gray, J.R., Grove, S.K., & Sutherland, S. (2017). Burns and Grove’s the practice of nursing research: Appraisal, synthesis, and generation of evidence (8th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders Elsevier.

Chapter 24, “Using Statistics to Predict”

2. Statistics and Data Analysis for Nursing Research

Chapter 9, “Correlation and Simple Regression” (pp. 208–222)

3. Select One Article from below for your assignment discussion: 

Hoerster, K. D., Mayer, J. A., Gabbard, S., Kronick, R. G., Roesch, S. C., Malcarne, V. L., & Zuniga, M. L. (2011). Impact of individual-, environmental-, and policy-level factors on health care utilization among US farmworkers. American Journal of Public Health, 101(4), 685–692. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2009.190892

Tritica-Majnaric, L., Zekic-Susac, M., Sarlija, N., & Vitale, B. (2010). Prediction of influenza vaccination outcome by neural networks and logistic regression. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 43(5), 774–781. doi:10.1016/j.jbi.2010.04.011

Xiao, Y., Griffin, M. P., Lake, D. E., & Moorman, J. R. (2010). Nearest-neighbor and logistic regression analyses of clinical and heart rate characteristics in the early diagnosis of neonatal sepsis. Medical Decision Making, 30(2), 258–266. doi:10.1177/0272989X09337791

Scenario Information

You are assuming the role of the project manager for a company called SuperPacks to provide a new backpack product with a built-in refrigeration pouch and radio module. Your customer for this project is the U.S. Army, Ground Forces and Special Operations. As the project manager for your team, you will be submitting to your manager a project management report.

Instructions

Having been recently hired by the company, you will assume the role of the assigned project manager overseeing the design, development, production, and delivery of the new product. The details below provide a summary of your company’s project:

• Company type (name your company): A small defense contractor located in the United States of America
• Company size (employees): 100
• Product: Backpack with built-in refrigerated pouch and radio module
• Awarded quantity: 200 units – 100 assigned to Ground Forces / 100 assigned to Special Operations
• Program Budget: Proposed award: $1,500,000
• Customer: U.S. Army, Ground Forces and Special Operations Unit
• Award date: Current Date
• Completion date: Two years from current date
• Delivery schedule: 100 units, 12months ARO (after receipt of order). 50 units every 3 months after first delivery
• Milestone Schedule: 
  • First delivery:
  • Second delivery:
  • Last delivery:
  • First milestone payment (from the customer):
  • Second milestone payment:
  • Final milestone payment:
  • Initial program review (at the customer’s site):
  • Subsequent program reviews: 6 months after the initial review

Expected Result from Senior Management

• On-time delivery for the three stated product deliverables
• Desire to complete the total program under the stated budget of $1,500,000
• All milestones accomplished by due dates listed
• Supplemental contract for future additional units (backpacks)

You will be submitting to your manager, using the Final Project Report Template in Microsoft Word  a project management report, which will include the following:

1. Executive summary
2. Project background/project overview
3. Major activities/milestones
4. Project closure synopsis
5. Project metrics performance
6. Project management issues
7. Project closure recommendations