Assignment 1: Practicum Objectives
This course includes a 160-hour practicum as part of the clinical hours that are required for the DNP credential. The Practicum Experience enables you to explore key issues related to your specialty practice and to refine your leadership skills as you work with others at your practicum site. To guide you through your practicum hours, you will develop practicum objectives.
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To Prepare
Review the Practicum Journal Document.
Begin to think about learning objectives that would guide your practicum hours, as well as the activities you will undertake to achieve those objectives. Refer to the DNP Essentials and your specialty competencies to inform your development of the learning objectives.
Note: You are required to keep a log of the time you spend related to your practicum experience. You can access your time log from the Welcome page in your Meditrek account. Please be sure to continuously input your hours throughout the term. Time logs are reviewed by your Instructors in Weeks 3, 7, and 11.
The Assignment: (1–2 pages)
List your practicum objectives that you have identified. The number of practicum objectives will vary based on your practicum experience.
Describe key activities associated with your practicum objectives. Be specific.
You will have an opportunity to resubmit your practicum objectives, after Faculty feedback, in Week 2.
Reminder: The College of Nursing requires that all papers submitted include a title page, introduction, summary, and references. The Walden Writing Center Sample Paper provides an example of those required elements (available at https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/templates/general#s-lg-box-20293632). All papers submitted must use this formatting.
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Practicum objectives are often confused with practicum goals. Although the latter relates to the former, practicum goals are broad statements of an expected practicum outcome of a course. They provide a future vision and summarize the subject area and intent of other related practicum objectives. In comparison, learners draw practicum objectives from the practicum goals. As guiding statements for every practicum encounter, they connect the learners’ intent with the reality within the practicum experience as well as to planned assessments (Yusuff, 2018).
In this paper, the author identifies the practicum objectives for her practicum experience and describes the key activities that will be associated with each objective. The author identified content areas that the nurse faculty expects DNP learners to learn by the end of the course, and used it as the best strategy to identify the practicum objectives. At DNP level, practicum objectives describe what a DNP learner must be able to do upon completion of the practicum experience (Chatterjee & Corral, 2017). A good practicum objective clearly highlights the skills, knowledge, and attitude that a learner will gain from an activity and must answer how well or how much, who, what, when, and will do, using the SMART mnemonic.
Practicum Objectives
Upon completion of the difficult airway workshop, participants should be able to formulate an accurate algorithm for the management of an obese adult patient with inadequate face mask ventilation, according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists difficult airway algorithm.”
- Objective 1: To obtain knowledge and practical home health experience by researching about policies within the context of Homecare Nursing upon completion of the practicum experience
- Objective 2: To obtain knowledge on the services that are available within the community to support greater independence, improve outcomes, and reduce readmissions of patients undergoing homebased care.
- Objective 3: Upon completion of the practicum experience, I shall develop skills in working with interdisciplinary teams in the Home Healthcare Setting and conducting high quality assessments and consultations with patients and families to help them achieve their goals.
- Objective 4: To network with other family nurse practitioners in the home health setting to advance knowledge and improve outcomes in the management of patients with multimorbid conditions receiving homebased care upon completion of the practicum experience
Key Activities Associated with Practicum Objectives
- Objective 1: To obtain knowledge and practical home health experience by researching about policies within the context of Homecare Nursing upon completion of the practicum experience
- Take advantage of opportunities to be part of development meetings, training sessions and learning opportunities that focus on homecare nursing
- Gain insights into the history of Homecare nursing and how Medicaid/Medicare has implemented new strategies for improved care and efficiency
- Objective 2: To obtain knowledge on the services that are available within the community to support greater independence, improve outcomes, and reduce readmissions of patients undergoing homebased care.
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- search and link up with community based services that support homecare nursing/homebased care
- refer/link patients and families with community based resources that support homebased care
- Objective 3: Upon completion of the practicum experience, I shall develop skills in working with interdisciplinary teams in the Home Healthcare Setting and conducting high quality assessments and consultations with patients and families to help them achieve their goals.
- Integrate newly discovered knowledge or information in every patient or family encounter
- Develop communication skills through active listening, and exercising situational awareness when working with patients, families and other healthcare providers
- Conduct consultations with families and patients to help them attain success and
- Objective 4: To network with other family nurse practitioners in the home health setting to advance knowledge and improve outcomes in the management of patients with multimorbid conditions receiving homebased care
- Every month, attend one conference to network with other FNPs specializing in home healthcare.
References
Chatterjee, D., & Corral, J. (2017). How to Write Well-Defined Learning Objectives. The journal of education in perioperative medicine : JEPM, 19(4), E610.
Yusuff K. B. (2018). Does personalized goal setting and study planning improve academic performance and perception of learning experience in a developing setting?. Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences, 13(3), 232–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtumed.2018.02.001
