A. Paper Content
1. Select a healthcare organization and in your introduction, provide an overview of your organization including services provided and organizational personnel.

2. Conduct an organizational assessment; identify the structure, leadership and communication processes.

3. Next, select one of the eight recommendations from the RWJF/IOM The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health Report. Identify which recommendation you selected, why you selected it, and discuss stakeholders. (See list of recommendations below). Be sure to select a recommendation that you would implement at your organization. You will not be discussing regional or national implementation, only implementation of the recommendation locally at your organization.

a. Recommendation #1: Remove scope-of-practice barriers. Advanced Practice Nurses should be able to practice to the full extent of their education and training.

b. Recommendation #2: Expand opportunities for nurses to lead and
diffuse collaborative improvement efforts. Private and public funders, health care organizations, nursing education programs, and nursing associations should expand opportunities for nurses to lead and manage collaborative efforts with physicians and other members of the health care team to conduct research and to redesign and improve practice environments and health systems. These entities should also provide opportunities for nurses to diffuse successful practices.

c. Recommendation #3: Implement nurse residency programs. State boards of nursing, accrediting bodies, the federal government, and health care organizations should take actions to support nurses� completion of a transition-to-practice program (nurse residency) after they have completed a prelicensure or advanced practice degree program or when they are transitioning into new clinical practice areas.

d. Recommendation #4: Increase the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree to 80 percent by 2020. Academic nurse leaders across all schools of nursing should work together to increase the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree from 50 to 80 percent by 2020. These leaders should partner with education accrediting bodies, private and public funders, and employers to ensure funding, monitor progress, and increase the diversity of students to create a workforce prepared to meet the demands of diverse populations across the lifespan.

e. Recommendation #5: Double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020. Schools of nursing, with support from private and public funders, academic administrators and university trustees, and accrediting bodies, should double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020 to add to the cadre of nurse faculty and researchers, with attention to increasing diversity.

f. Recommendation #6: Ensure that nurses engage in lifelong learning. Accrediting bodies, schools of nursing, health care organizations, and continuing competency educators from multiple health professions should collaborate to ensure that nurses and nursing students and faculty continue their education and engage in lifelong learning to gain the competencies needed to provide care for diverse populations across the lifespan.

g. Recommendation #7: Prepare and enable nurses to lead change to advance health. Nurses, nursing education programs, and nursing associations should prepare the nursing workforce to assume leadership positions across all levels, while public, private, and governmental health care decision makers should ensure that leadership positions are available to and filled by nurses.

h. Recommendation #8: Build an infrastructure for the collection and analysis of interprofessional health care workforce data. The National Health Care Workforce Commission, with oversight from the Government Accountability Office and the Health Resources and Services Administration, should lead a collaborative effort to improve research and the collection and analysis of data on health care workforce requirements. The Workforce Commission and the Health Resources and Services Administration should collaborate with state licensing boards, state nursing workforce centers, and the Department of Labor in this effort to ensure that the data are timely and publicly accessible.

4. Identify the impact of the selected recommendation on your organization, nursing and healthcare delivery. Some items you may want to address include: impact on services and efficiency, quality and safety, organizational outcomes, or consequences for the work environment and healthcare team members.

5. Conduct an evidence-based literature review using three peer-reviewed articles that reflect the latest information (e.g. if reporting APRN vacancy data, the information should be from the latest year that the data is available; if researching best practice, the most relevant evidence-based guidelines may be slightly older than five years). However, in general, it is best to use literature not older than 5 years unless classic works. Please only use references that have a date, and are primary sources.

6. Realistically identify what aspect or to what degree the selected recommendation will be implemented at your organization. Then, using the strategic planning process, describe how you would establish a plan for moving towards the implementation of the recommendation (e.g. goal setting, stakeholders, and resources).

7. Select one of the change models from Borkowski Chapter 18 and apply that model to the implementation of your selected recommendation. How will you measure goal attainment, and how often and when will you evaluate goal attainment?

B. Writing Guidelines
1. Be sure to follow APA formatting guidelines for your paper. Proper APA formatting is worth 10% of the total grade for this assignment.

a. In order to earn full credit, it will be important that all sections of your paper are formatted properly per the APA 6th edition manual. At a minimum, the following components must be formatted per APA style: running head, font and font size, title page, margins, use of acronyms, lack of bias and jargon, in-text citations, and references. Headings are required for this and every assignment in this course (see APA Manual, page 62). Do not use Roman numerals, letters or numbers in headings.

b. Double spacing is required for your paper. APA requires that all spacing be equal throughout the entire paper; including spaces between sentences, paragraphs and headings. Some Word� programs have preset defaults that increase the spacing between paragraphs. For these programs, you will need to go in and manually reset this default in order to avoid an APA spacing error.

2. Since there is generally a very limited use of direct quotes in scholarly and scientific literature, the use of direct quotes is discouraged for papers in this course. If you do use direct quotes, there should be no more than two (2) in the entire paper. They should be very limited in length, generally a sentence or less. In addition, whenever used, you must explain how the quote is relevant to the point you are making in the paper.

3. Write the paper based on the assumption that the reader knows nothing about the topic or purpose of your paper—as you would if you were preparing a manuscript for publication. This paper may be written in first person.

4. There is a minimum of seven (7) recent references required for this paper.

a. All references should be dated, unless the date is not available and source is a widely recognized, authoritative website (e.g. CDC, CMS.gov, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Joint Commission HHS.gov, etc.).

b. References must be from evidence-based and/or peer-reviewed primary sources and be used to support your ideas and responses.

c. All peer-reviewed articles should reflect the latest information (e.g. if reporting APRN vacancy data, the information should be from the latest year that the data is available; if researching best practice, the most relevant evidence-based guidelines may be slightly older than five years). However, in general, it is best to use literature not older than 5 years unless classic works. Please only use references that have a date, and are primary sources.

C. Assignment Template
Please use the following template as the framework for this assignment. All elements embedded in this template must be addressed in the content of your paper. The headings for your paper can be derived from Roman Numerals 2-8 below. Please do not use the actual Roman numeral symbols as a part of your heading.

Title Page
Introductory Paragraph
Body
I. Overview of Selected Organization
a. Overview of the Organization
b. Overview of Services Provided by the Organization
c. Organizational Personnel
II. Organizational Assessment
a. Description of the organizational structure
b. Identify and discuss the present Organizational leadership model
c. Identify and discuss the Organizational communication processes
III. RWJF/IOM Transforming Nursing Initiative
a. (Identify your) Selected RWJF/IOM Recommendation and provide a brief overview.
b. What existing evidence in the Literature supports this general recommendation?
1. Identify supportive literature that is evidence-based (minimum of 3 peer-reviewed articles for the literature reviewed in this section; must be original sources).
2. Summarize the literature as it relates to the selected recommendation and its potential impact on patients, providers and healthcare delivery.
VI. Why is this recommendation good/relevant to your organization?
a. Discuss why you selected this particular recommendation and its value for your organization.
b. Who are the stakeholders at your organization and what would be their interest in supporting or not supporting the recommendation?
V. Organizational Impact
a. Discuss the impact of the implementation of the selected recommendation to your organization, what might be some of the intended and unintended consequences.
b. Additionally, select one (1) the following and discuss as it relates to the implementation of the selected recommendation at your organization.
1. Impact on services and efficiency
2. Impact on quality and safety
3. Consequences for work environment and health care team members
4. Impact on organizational outcomes