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Enrollment in Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs is robust; the American Association of Colleges of Nursing reported 32,678 students enrolled in 348 programs in 2018 (AACN, n.d.). Robust enrollment has created a need for faculty teaching in other nursing degree programs to be DNP project advisors at the authors' universities. The authors discovered that most faculty lacked the knowledge and skills needed to advise DNP projects that take the form of an evidence-based practice (EBP) or quality improvement (QI) initiative as many have research doctorates and/or received their terminal degrees before EBP became mainstream in national nursing curricula.
This article describes the DNP project roadmap that was developed to facilitate project advisement in a post-master's and a postbaccalaureate DNP program. The roadmap includes EBP and QI tools and resources that faculty project advisors, especially those new to the DNP project advisement role, can use for their own professional development and to guide and support student projects that involve implementing a new practice (e.g., EBP, purposeful hourly rounding) or improving an existing practice (e.g., QI, standardizing asthma treatment using an integrated care model).
Method
Development of the DNP Project Roadmap
The AACN (2015) DNP scholarly project guidelines, literature on DNP project criteria, and faculty project advisor expertise were used to create the roadmap. The DNP project advisement process was developed from practice-based knowledge from members of the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses DNP Leadership Taskforce that included faculty and practice mentor experiences with DNP project advisement and personal experiences as a DNP student.
Table A (available in the online version of this article) displays the project phases and descriptions aligned with the DNP scholarly project guidelines from the AACN (2015) Taskforce. The Problem Identification & Evidence Review, Project Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation phases follow the AACN project recommendations of evidence synthesis and translation, and implementation of a practice change that improves health outcomes for a system or population. In the Evaluation and Dissemination phases, students evaluate the practice change processes and/or outcomes and share the results locally, regionally, and nationally. The last column contains a place for the student to record the date the component was completed. A foundation for future practice scholarship is built as students successfully complete each roadmap phase.
Problem Identification...