Nursing Case Studies: Critical Thinking Exercises

Nursing Case Studies: Critical Thinking Exercises

Nursing Case Studies: Critical Thinking Exercises

Question Description
Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

2. Read the required chapter(s) of the textbook and any additional recommended resources. Some answers may require you to do additional research on the Internet or in other reference sources. Choose your sources carefully.

3. Consider the discussions and the any insights gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

Assignment:

Critical Thinking Exercises :

Case Study #1: Mountainview College Department of Nursing

Mountainview Community College , an associate degree-granting college, is located in a medium-sized metropolitan city of approximately 400,000 inhabitants. Health facilities include four hospitals, several-drop in clinics staffed by physicians and primary health care nurse practitioners; and a visiting nurse service in which all community-based health care except medical care is coordinated. The College provides business, technology, community service, and health science programs to approximately 6500 full and part-time students. Among the programs is a 2-year, associate-degree nursing (ADN) program. Springhaven University is also located in the city and offers a 4-year baccalaureate nursing (BSN) program. In addition to offering the 2-year ADN program, Mountainview College has entered into a collaborative partnership with Springhaven University, to offer the first two years of the BSN program. Springhaven will offer the third and fourth years. There is agreement to develop a new curriculum together. Participants from both institutions and the health community are working collaboratively to develop the new BSN curriculum.

1. Describe matters that the dean of nursing at Springhaven University and the Chair of the nursing department at Mountainview Community College should discuss about leadership of the collaborative curriculum development project.

2. What factors should be considered when deciding on leadership for the collaborative curriculum development process?

3. How might a curriculum leader be selected or appointed? Who should the leader be? Should there be two leaders, one for each institution? Why or why not? How could community nursing leaders contribute to the leadership of the curriculum development enterprise?

4. What should be included in a faculty development program to prepare potential curriculum leaders?

Case Study #2: Old Ivy University College of Nursing

Old Ivy University College of Nursing offers BSN, BSN completion, MS, and PhD programs. It is located in a large metropolitan city of approximately 2,500,000 inhabitants. Health facilities include twelve hospitals, nurse practitioner clinics, home health services, and drop-in clinics. The university provides graduate and undergraduate programs to 52,000 full-and part-time students in a full range of programs.

The College of Nursing has approximately 1300 students, of whom approximately sixty percent are full-time, and these mainly in the BSN program. The BSN program has been accredited. Although the curriculum content and teaching-learning approaches have been updated periodically, the overall structure of the curriculum and the location of clinical experiences have undergone little change. Most faculty members believe that the curriculum has lost its unity and that it is time to develop a new curriculum with more progressive philosophical approaches and learning experiences.

Most faculty teaching classroom courses in the BSN program have a PhD degree; some have a master’s degree. Some clinical instructors have master’s degrees, although the majority has a BSN. Doctorally-prepared faculty teach in the MS and PhD programs although most without an undergraduate teaching assignment do guest lectures in the BSN program.

Dr. Lumella, the Dean of the College of Nursing, is supportive of the undergraduate faculty’s proposal to design a completely new curriculum. She has appointed Dr. Beverly Eme, an experienced and long-time faculty member, as the curriculum leader. Dr. Eme is a popular choice since she teaches in the BSN program and is highly supportive of faculty colleagues. Dr. Eme begins to plan how to proceed with her colleagues.

1. How can Dr. Eme help the faculty choose a change theory to guide their overall process?

2. What committees could be struck in order to facilitate curriculum development? What purposes would they serve? How should committee members be selected or appointed? Who should the members be?

3. If some of the faculty teaching in the MS and PhD programs are reluctant to participate in undergraduate curriculum development, how could Dr. Lumella and Dr. Eme encourage them to do so?

4. What decision-making approaches would be effective for the curriculum developers?

5. What could be a practical work plan for developing the curriculum? What are the logistical factors associated with joint curriculum planning by faculty members of various degree levels?

6. What potential is there for publication arising from curriculum development? How might faculty determine authorship?

7. What resources might be needed for the curriculum work to be achieved?

8. What faculty development activities would be helpful?

Required Textbooks:

Billings, D. M. & J. A. Halstead. (2012). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (4th ed.). St. Louis: Saunders. ISBN: 9781455705511

Keating, S. B. (2011). Curriculum development and evaluation in nursing (2nd ed.). New York: Springer. ISBN: 978-0826107220

Iwasiw, C., Goldenberg, D., & Andrusyszyn, M. (2009). Curriculum development in nursing education (2nd ed.). Boston: Jones & Bartlett. ISBN: 978-0763755959

Nursing Case Studies: Critical Thinking Exercises

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.