NURS 8512 Week 1 DNP Project Milestone Map Example

The Problem Restated and the Term Laid Out: A Milestone Map for a DNP Project on Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention in Rural Primary Care

Student Name

College of Nursing, Walden University

NURS 8512: DNP Project and Practicum I

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

The Problem Restated and the Term Laid Out: A Milestone Map for a DNP Project on Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention in Rural Primary Care

The Approved Problem, Word for Word

The problem statement approved by the project committee at the end of the previous term is reproduced here without change, because every later document in this term must be checked against it:

"At a rural family medicine clinic, adults attending annual visits are screened for unhealthy alcohol use with a validated instrument at only about one in four visits, and adults who screen positive rarely receive documented brief intervention or an offer of referral, although national guidance recommends both."

The clinic is a composite, built from features common to small rural practices: three providers, two registered nurses, two medical assistants, a front desk team and a behavioral health counselor who works at the clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The one-in-four figure comes from an informal chart review the clinic's nurse manager conducted before the project began, and it will be replaced by a formal baseline in the implementation course. The guidance referred to is the federal recommendation that primary care teams ask adults about drinking and give short behavioral counseling to those engaged in risky or hazardous drinking (US Preventive Services Task Force et al., 2018).

What Must Exist by the Final Week

By the end of this term, the project must have a complete proposal that the committee can approve for implementation. The DNP Essentials describe the scholarly project as work that integrates evidence into practice and is evaluated in a real setting (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021), and a planning term exists to make that integration possible before any change reaches patients. The milestone map below lists every document the proposal needs, the week each is due and what counts as done.

The Milestone Map

Table 1 ties each milestone to a named deliverable and a completion test.

Table 1

Milestone Map for the Planning Term

Each deliverable builds on the previous one, so a late milestone delays every milestone after it.

Dependencies and the Critical Path

Not all milestones are equally sensitive to delay. Three form the critical path. The evidence appraisal in week 4 must be finished before the synthesis in week 5 can argue anything, because a synthesis built on an unfinished appraisal tends to cite studies it has not weighed. The setting and stakeholder section in week 6 must precede the scope discussion in week 7, because scope depends on what the clinic's staff can realistically do. And the evaluation plan in week 8 must be complete before the drift audit, since the audit compares measures across documents.

Two milestones are less sensitive. The progress thread in week 3 can be written on any day of that week, and the milestone report in week 11 depends only on the others being finished. If time runs short, effort should go first to the critical path.

Risks to the Map

Three risks could disrupt the schedule. First, clinic leadership may not be available to settle scope in week 7, especially if a provider leaves or flu season fills the schedule. The project lead has asked the medical director to hold a thirty-minute meeting in week 6 as a backup. Second, the evidence base on screening and brief intervention is large, and the appraisal could expand beyond what can be done in a week. The appraisal will therefore be limited to guidelines, systematic reviews and studies conducted in primary care, with rural settings sought specifically. Third, wording drift is likely as documents are written weeks apart. Discussions of DNP projects note that scope and focus often shift during the project, sometimes without anyone deciding to change them (Dols et al., 2017). The drift audit in week 9 exists for that reason, but each document will also be checked against the problem statement as it is written, so that the audit finds little.

Keeping the Map Current

The map will be checked each week. When a deliverable is finished, its completion test will be recorded as met or not met, with the date. When a deliverable slips, the map will record the new date and which later milestones are affected. The week 3 progress post and the week 11 milestone report will both compare actual progress with this map, so it serves as the term's single reference for what was intended. A map that is only written once and never checked would not do that job.

The map also sets expectations with the clinic. The medical director and nurse manager will receive a copy, so they know when the project will ask for their time: a short interview about the setting in week 6, the scope meeting in week 7 and a review of the evaluation plan in week 8. Naming those requests now, with dates, makes it easier for busy leaders to protect the time and shows that the project respects the clinic's schedule.

References

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The Essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education.

Dols, J. D., Hernández, C., & Miles, H. (2017). The DNP project: Quandaries for nursing scholars. Nursing Outlook, 65(1), 84-93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2016.07.009

US Preventive Services Task Force, Curry, S. J., Krist, A. H., Owens, D. K., Barry, M. J., Caughey, A. B., Davidson, K. W., Doubeni, C. A., Epling, J. W., Kemper, A. R., Kubik, M., Landefeld, C. S., Mangione, C. M., Silverstein, M., Simon, M. A., Tseng, C.-W., & Wong, J. B. (2018). Screening and behavioral counseling interventions to reduce unhealthy alcohol use in adolescents and adults: US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation statement. JAMA, 320(18), 1899-1909. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.16789