| Course | NURS 8720 Doctoral Seminar II |
|---|---|
| Week | Week 2 |
| Paper type | Aim statement with annotated copy |
| Length | About 1,040 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Walden University |
| Program | Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NURS 8720 Week 2
From Eighteen to Fifty Percent of Ventilator Days: An Aim Statement for Nurse-Led Early Mobilization, With the Annotated Copy a Faculty Reader Returned
Student Name
College of Nursing, Walden University
NURS 8720: Doctoral Seminar II
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
From Eighteen to Fifty Percent of Ventilator Days: An Aim Statement for Nurse-Led Early Mobilization, With the Annotated Copy a Faculty Reader Returned
The Aim
By June 30, increase the proportion of eligible ventilator days on which a patient in the 14-bed ICU reaches ICU Mobility Scale level 3 or higher from 18% to 50%.
Where the Baseline Came From
The baseline of 18% comes from a retrospective review of ventilated patients in the unit over the four months before the project began. Across those months there were 212 eligible ventilator days, defined below, and on 38 of them the nursing or therapy notes recorded that the patient sat over the edge of the bed, stood or walked. Sitting over the edge of the bed is level 3 on the ICU Mobility Scale, which runs from 0, lying in bed with no activity, to 10, walking independently (Hodgson et al., 2014). The scale was chosen because it records the highest level a patient reaches in a day with good agreement between raters, and because it can be applied to notes written without the scale in mind, which a baseline review requires.
The review has a known weakness. Because the scale was not in use, levels were assigned from free-text notes, and an activity not written down was counted as not having happened. The true baseline may be somewhat higher. The project will begin recording the scale level each day from the start, so that the first month's figures provide a check on the retrospective baseline.
Why the Target Is Fifty Percent
A target of 50% is ambitious but not arbitrary. The evidence review found that trials showing benefit from early mobilization moved patients from very little structured activity to regular activity, while the largest trial, which raised daily mobilization in units that already did a fair amount, found no gain and more adverse events (TEAM Study Investigators, 2022). The aim is therefore to move the unit from rare to regular mobilization, not to the levels of intensive programs. Some ventilator days will never qualify: patients who fail the safety screen, who are deeply sedated for clinical reasons or who are near the end of life. The unit's medical director estimated, from the baseline review, that about a third of eligible days would still fail the morning safety screen. A target of 50% assumes that most days passing the screen will lead to level 3 or higher, which is realistic only if the protocol works as intended. A rounder target such as 75% would require mobilizing patients on days the screen excludes, which the project will not do.
The target was also tested against the unit's capacity. Mobilizing a ventilated patient to the edge of the bed takes a nurse and a respiratory therapist about twenty to thirty minutes. At 50% of roughly 53 eligible days a month, the unit would need about 27 such sessions a month, or about one a day spread across two shifts and several staff. The unit's nurse manager and respiratory therapy supervisor both judged that workload achievable without extra staff, which is the condition the aim depends on. A target needing two or three sessions a day would have required staffing the project cannot provide.
Why the Window Is That Long
The project starts in January and runs to June 30, about 26 weeks. That is long enough for several improvement cycles, each lasting two to three weeks, and long enough for monthly data to show whether a change is holding. It is short enough to fit within the doctoral project timeline. The unit averages about 53 eligible ventilator days a month, so six months will provide roughly 300 days of data, enough for a run chart to detect a sustained shift (Perla et al., 2011).
Who Counts as Eligible
An eligible ventilator day is a calendar day on which an adult patient in the ICU received invasive mechanical ventilation for at least part of the day and had been ventilated for at least 24 hours. Days are excluded if the patient was receiving comfort care only, had an open abdomen or unstable spinal injury, or had a physician order for bed rest documented that day. The safety screen is not an exclusion from the denominator: a day on which the screen is failed still counts as eligible, so the measure shows how often the screen prevents mobilization as well as how often the protocol succeeds.
The Annotated Copy
The faculty reader's notes on the first draft focused on four places. Table 1 records them in the order the reader raised them.
Table 1
Faculty Annotations on the Draft Aim and the Changes Made
| Draft wording | Faculty note | Change made |
|---|---|---|
| "increase early mobilization" | Increase what, measured how? I looked for the measure first and could not find it. | Named the measure: proportion of eligible ventilator days at ICU Mobility Scale level 3 or higher |
| "ventilated patients" | All of them, from the first hour? Including comfort care? | Defined eligible ventilator days, with a 24-hour threshold and stated exclusions |
| "to 50%" | From what? A target without a baseline cannot be judged. | Added the 18% baseline and its source |
| "by the end of the project" | When is that? Name the date. | Changed to "by June 30" |
The reader looked first for the measure, then the population, then the baseline. The date was the last thing checked, but its absence was marked as firmly as the others.
What the Revision Taught
The draft read clearly to me because I knew what each phrase meant. The reader showed that every part of an aim has to be checkable by someone outside the unit. The most useful change was defining eligible days to include days that fail the safety screen. In the first draft, I had planned to count only days that passed, which would have made the measure look better while hiding whether the screen itself was blocking mobilization. Improvement guides warn that a measure should reflect what matters to the people affected rather than what makes a project look successful (Langley et al., 2009). Keeping failed screens in the denominator means that if the proportion stalls, the data will show whether the protocol or the screen is the reason.
References
Hodgson, C., Needham, D., Haines, K., Bailey, M., Ward, A., Harrold, M., Young, P., Zanni, J., Buhr, H., Higgins, A., Presneill, J., & Berney, S. (2014). Feasibility and inter-rater reliability of the ICU Mobility Scale. Heart & Lung, 43(1), 19-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrtlng.2013.11.003
Langley, G. J., Moen, R. D., Nolan, K. M., Nolan, T. W., Norman, C. L., & Provost, L. P. (2009). The improvement guide: A practical approach to enhancing organizational performance (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Perla, R. J., Provost, L. P., & Murray, S. K. (2011). The run chart: A simple analytical tool for learning from variation in healthcare processes. BMJ Quality & Safety, 20(1), 46-51. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs.2009.037895
TEAM Study Investigators and the ANZICS Clinical Trials Group. (2022). Early active mobilization during mechanical ventilation in the ICU. New England Journal of Medicine, 387(19), 1747-1758. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2209083
The Walden NURS 8720 Week 2 instructions
In this week's assignment, you will usually write an aim statement for your project and defend each of its parts. Put the population, the measure, the baseline, the target and the date in a single sentence. Then answer the questions a reader will ask: where the baseline came from and how reliable it is, why the target is that number, why the time window is that long and exactly who or what counts in the denominator. Ground the target in both the evidence and your setting's capacity. Define eligibility with rules a stranger could apply. If your aim was returned with comments, record each comment and the change it produced, and explain what the revision taught you about writing for an outside reader.
Inside the NURS 8720 Week 2 example
The aim appears alone and highlighted. The baseline section explains the 38 of 212 days from a retrospective note review, the ICU Mobility Scale from Hodgson and colleagues and the undercounting risk. The target section uses the TEAM trial to explain why the aim is regular rather than intensive mobilization, subtracts days likely to fail the safety screen and checks the target against about one session a day of staff capacity. The window section counts 300 expected days and cites Perla and colleagues. The eligibility section defines a ventilator day and keeps failed screens in the denominator. Table 1 lists four annotations, and the final section draws on Langley and colleagues.
Reading the NURS 8720 Week 2 rubric
Aim statements are typically graded on completeness, measurability, realism and the quality of the justification. Faculty reward aims that a reader could check: a named measure, a stated baseline with its source, a numeric target and a date. Credit rises when the target is justified by both the evidence and the setting, rather than chosen as a round number. Clear eligibility rules, including what stays in the denominator, show careful thinking about measurement. When an annotated draft is part of the task, faculty value specific responses to each comment. Faculty notice, too, whether a definition is shown protecting the measure from looking better than the practice it describes.
NURS 8720 Week 2 help: mistakes that cost marks
Aim statements often promise to improve or increase something without naming the measure, or give a target with no baseline. Others pick a target that sounds impressive but cannot be reached without changing the safety rules. Some define the denominator in a way that flatters the result, for example by counting only days that passed a screen. Write the sentence with blanks for each of the five parts, then fill them only when you can source each one. Ask someone outside your unit to read it and tell you what they would count. Our writers can prepare an aim statement for your project, with each part justified and a clear definition of who is counted.
Get a NURS 8720 Week 2 example written to your instructions
Send the assignment prompt, any template your section circulates and the word ceiling it sets, and an aim statement example matched to those constraints comes back written to the same rubric. First custom one is free, inside 24 to 48 hours. Where the prompt asks for a specific format for the sentence itself, that format is what the example follows.
More NURS 8720 papers and DNP samples
- NURS 8720 Week 1: Project Classification Post
- NURS 8720 Week 3: Design Comparison Paper
- NURS 8720 Week 4: PDSA Model Brief
- NURS 8720 Week 5: Project Alignment Matrix
- NURS 8720 Week 6: Method Defense Reply
- NURS 8720 Week 7: Practice Setting Analysis
- NURS 8720 Week 8: Project Feasibility Analysis
- NURS 8720 Week 9: Design Limitations Post
- NURS 8720 Week 10: Methods Section Draft
- NURS 8720 Week 11: Project Revision Memo
- NURS 8710 Week 2: Search Strategy Record
- NURS 8705 Week 2: Problem Statement Draft
- NURS 8600 Week 2: DNP project launch brief
- DNRS 6211 Week 2: Concept analysis
NURS 8720 Week 2 questions, answered
Does the aim have to include a number?
Most rubrics at this level read for a measurable target, and a number is the shortest way to supply one. The example gives both a baseline and a target so the size of the intended change is visible. Where a prompt asks for a qualitative aim instead, the same discipline applies: name what will differ, for whom, and by when, in terms someone else could verify.
Where can I find a free NURS 8720 Week 2 sample paper?
Above, the aim, its four justifications and the annotated faculty copy are published in full and free to read.
Why does the NURS 8720 Week 2 aim keep failed safety screens in the denominator?
So that if progress stalls, the data show whether the protocol or the screen itself is preventing mobilization, rather than hiding screened-out days.
How was the 50% target chosen?
From the evidence that benefit comes from moving units from rare to regular mobilization, the estimate that about a third of days would fail the screen and the staff capacity for about one session a day.
What did the faculty reader look for first?
The measure, then the population, then the baseline, with the date checked last but marked as firmly as the others.