Discussion: Practicum Professional Development Objectives: Progress Appraisal

Running Head: PRACTICUM PROJET METHODOLOGY AND EVALUATION
Practicum Project Methodology and Evaluation
Student’s Name:
Instructor’s Name:
Course:
Date:
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Practicum Project Focus
The high turnover of nurses in healthcare facilities around the country is proving to be a
worrying factor for both the patients and the management of the hospital. As nurses leave hospital,
the patients remain unattended to. Additionally the nurses might be involuntarily leaving their jobs
just because they are under performing. It’s thus critical to establish an appropriate plan that will
help develop the methodology for the project and the ways to measure and evaluate if the
objectives of the projects have been met.
Objectives and goals of the project
The Practicum project focus has been formulated to attain and achieve certain goals and
objectives. The set objectives for the project include; to recommend more psychiatric professionals
to be posted into the facility due to the high turnover. Secondly, it’s important to develop some
sort of platform in which the veterans and the health professionals can relate. Last but not least, to
look for ways in which the community can help the veterans to recover in the instance that the
healthcare professionals and nurses to help them are less. The goals of the project which are
supposed to be long term and also in line with the objectives include; to find a long lasting solution
to the problem that is being experienced at Tennessee Valley health care facility. Another goal is
to try and identify tools that can be used at the Tennessee Ville facility to help manage the
psychiatric unit.
Theories, models and concepts to be used in developing the methodology.
Since the problem at hand is mostly influenced by the nurse’s behavior, their environment
and working condition the theories that can be used include the nursing theory, social theory,
humanistic theory and psychodynamic theory, (Holloway, & Galvin, 2016). The fact that the
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nurses sudden turnover might be as a result of poor working conditions, poor schedules and poor
working conditions only proves that there are social and environmental factors that might be at
play in the facility. The social theory help to achieve the objective of creating a platform between
the health care professionals and veterans to relate. The social theory model also helps, to fulfill
the goal that relates to how the community can participate and help in treating of psychiatric
veterans. The humanistic theory on the other hand helps to know if the nurses are actually
performing well and if they are not, help them explore their potential to reduce the high turnover.
Methodology to be used
The methodology that is most suitable to be used in this project is the qualitative method.
The reason as to why this method is effect is because it states who is going to be involved in the
methods, where, when and how the data to be collected is going to be obtained. In qualitative
methodological analysis we look at things such as human behavior, (Bowling, 2014). Use of
surveys and questionnaires can be used to determine why nurses are leaving their jobs. Nurses at
Tennessee health care facility should can be given questioners so that they can express elements
of their jobs that they do not like. Poor working environments, wages and even overworking should
all be stated in in their surveys and questionnaires.
The bodies that can be used together with the psychiatric department to try and solve the
crisis at Tennessee hospital is the American Nurses association (ANA) which can also conduct a
survey and observation of the psychiatric unit at the hospital to see if the working conditions of
the nurses are favorable. Moreover the (ANA) body can also try to establish if the nurses are truly
skilled and performing their duties as expected so as to rule out the fact that they may actually be
involuntary being turned over to other facilities due to lack of skills and performance on the job.
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Quantitative analysis is also an important method as it helps to tabulate the number of
working hours of the nurse, the total number of patients they attend to in a single shift and if their
wages is proportional to their working hours.
Formative and summative evaluation
To evaluate if the methodology put in place is actually working to attain the set goals and
objectives of the practicum project, both the formative and summative evaluation are conducted.
The formative evaluation will assess if the objectives and goals are being achieved while the
project is going on. The summative evaluation on the other hand will only give the assessment at
the end of the project. To evaluate the achievement of the project from a formative evaluation, I
would observe if the number of nurses’ turnover is decreasing after sometime. Additionally at the
completion of every stage of the project, I would assess if the short term objectives have been met.
To perform a summative evaluation, exactly six months after the project has been finalized,
I will assess if the goals were met and realized, (Townsend & Morgan, 2017). Quantitative
methodology that uses mathematical tabulations, will be effective to determine if the numbers of
nurses’ turnover has decreased or increased after the six months after the project completion. A
decline in the nurses’ turnover and an increased number in psychiatric professional can be good
indicators that the project was a success.
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References
Bowling, A. (2014). Research methods in health: investigating health and health services.
McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Holloway, I., & Galvin, K. (2016). Qualitative research in nursing and healthcare. John Wiley
& Sons.
Townsend, M. C., & Morgan, K. I. (2017). Psychiatric mental health nursing: Concepts of care
in evidence-based practice. FA Davis.

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