A handwashing audit has been conducted in your ward area. This audit identified 75% of staff from all fields are failing to maintain the minimum standards required.

Assignment Brief

Evaluation of an incident in Professional Practice (2000 words), Module Learning Outcomes 1, 2 and 3.

You will choose one of the generic options below or the scenarios related to your field of practice and your position as a student nurse. The focus of this assignment is to critically appraise your chosen scenario with reference literature and module learning outcomes.       

You will provide a critical discussion of leadership, management and teamworking styles, alongside clinical governance and accountability in relation to risk management in relation to the scenario of your choice.

You will apply clinical decision making and problem-solving skills to critically examine the professional, legal, and ethical issues relevant to the delivery of care in your case study.  Finally, you will critically evaluate your role as a student nurse, member of the nursing, and wider multi-professional team, and make proposals to improve patient safety in the delivery of care to patients and service users in your field of practice

Assessment Brief

Choose one of the generic options (Option 1 or 2) or the field specific option and critically appraise your chosen Scenario with reference t peer reviewed literature and the module learning outcomes. 

Generic Option 1: A handwashing audit has been conducted in your ward area. This audit identified 75% of staff from all fields are failing to maintain the minimum standards required. It has been highlighted that there is no current ward manager, and the post has been vacant for three months. Two senior sisters are currently sharing the role, and this is causing consternation among the nursing team. There are definite splits in the teams and cliques are developing among members of staff leading to friction. Three of the nursing team have handed their notice in since the ward manager left and this has caused severe staff shortages on the ward, with staff working short-staffed or overtime to cover the shortages. A new manager has been brought in to cover the vacancy while a permanent one is recruited. You have been asked to work with the new manager, your PS and 2 other team members to form a solution-focused working group to develop solutions to prevent this from happening in the future.  

Generic Option 2: Seven spot checks of patient care plans have been conducted in your work area over the past four weeks. A lack of consistency in relation to care plans not matching patients’ needs, and a lack of information in the care plan evaluations were the main concerns. Furthermore, it has been noted a significant portion of evaluations appear to be copy and paste from previous days or nights with amendments to clinical observations noted in some cases, or no observations documented in others. It was brought to the attention of the manager previously, but nothing has changed since that time. The manager has been told this is unacceptable and must change. You have been asked to work with your PA and form a solution-focused working group to develop solutions to prevent this from happening in the future.

Field Specific Options

Mental Health: Risk Assessment

You have been asked to take the lead in the care of Mr Adam Green, when you review his documentation, you note that he has had no clinical mental health risk assessment for over 12 months despite seeing the Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) 5 times in the past 12 months. The manager for your area undertakes spot checks of ten current patients care records and discovered that 60% of them have not had this risk assessment updated within the past 12 months despite being in contact with services. The manager is new in post and has only been with the team for 6 weeks and is concerned that this may be a bigger problem. You and your PS have been asked to take part in a solution-based focus group to develop solutions to prevent this from happening in future.

Learning Disability: Care Planning

Your Practice Assessor (PA) asks you to review the care plan of a 65-yr-old Emma Jones who lives in supported accommodation. Emma has epilepsy and a dual diagnosis of moderate learning disability and psychosis. Emma has recently presented with increased psychotic episodes, challenging behaviour, self-harm, and an increase in her epileptic seizures. When you review her documentation, you find that Emma has not had a comprehensive risk assessment or medication review completed in the last two years. You speak to your Practice Assessor who conducts a review of the documents belonging to the three other residents who live in the home; it is noted that updated risk assessments and medication reviews have not been completed for all four residents during the past two years. Your Practice Assessor started in this post three months ago, the manager has been in post for four years. You and your PA are exploring ideas to improve record keeping for the residents, and how to discuss this with the manager who has a very “hands off” approach to leadership and is not very involved in the day to day management of the residents. 

Adult Nursing: Pressure Care

Your Practice Assessor (PA) has been asked to take on the role of “Pressure Risk Lead” in your ward environment. As part of this you and your PA have reviewed the patients care records for all patients currently on the ward. You notice that not all patients have had risk assessment completed, and some of those completed have not been updated since the patient’s admission. You are asked to review Mr Brown, after the HCA notices a Grade 3 Pressure Ulcer on his heel. When you review Mr Brown’s documentation, his SKKIN bundle shows there to be no documented evidence of his pressure sore. The ward manager has been in post for 5-years and wants you to be involved in a solution focus group to improve record keeping on the ward. 

Child: Sleep Monitoring

You are working on a Children’s ward, and feedback from the children’s parents has highlighted that their child’s sleep routine was severely disrupted while they were on the ward. You your Practice Assessor (PA) have been asked to conduct an audit of the current inpatient documentation which highlights almost 50% of children’s care records show there is no record of the child`s sleep during their time on the ward. The ward manager is very hands on and wants this to change rapidly. You and your PA have been asked to take part in a solution-based focus group develop solutions to improve record keeping on the ward. 

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding:

1. You will be able to critically discuss the concepts and theories of leadership, management, team working, risk management, clinical governance, and accountability in relation to own professional and inter-professional practice.

Abilities:

1. You will be able to apply clinical decision-making and problem-solving skills to critically examine the professional, legal, and ethical issues relevant to the delivery of care to patients and service users in your field of professional practice.
2. You will be able to critically analyse your role as a member of the multi-professional team working collaboratively to improve safety in the delivery of care to patients and services users in your field of professional practice. 

Assessment Criteria

The School generic grading criteria and the learning outcomes will apply.

The expectation is that text based assessment tasks will be submitted via Turnitin®.

Identities of individuals and organisations should be anonymised and confidences respected. Consent should be obtained from individual service users for use of any of their personal health information.  

Arrangements for the return of work and feedback

You should normally receive feedback on your assessments three teaching  weeks (in term time) after the submission date for the assessment. The date you can expect to receive your summative feedback for this assessment is Thursday, September 25th. 

Feedback is noted as "in-text comments", sidebar text, and Rubric numerical scoring, and should help you understand why you received your mark and what you can do to improve your performance in future assessments.

Tutor reassessment

This assignment is not available for Tutor Reassessment