Overview
As a nurse leader, you will be expected to understand healthcare trends and promote change to improve trend-related outcomes. As a practicing nurse, you have likely already experienced healthcare trends related to your role. For example, you may have noticed the focus on an innovation in your specialty, such as new patient care technology. You might have also identified a pattern or phenomenon among your patient population, such as patient fall rates.
The websites of Healthy People and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offer commonly used and easily accessible data. While similar, these agencies provide different perspectives on healthcare trends. Healthy People seeks to promote the health of all individuals in the United States, while the CDC aims to protect individuals from threats related to health, safety, and security. Healthcare organizations collect and report data to appropriate agencies regarding the conditions and trends among the populations they serve.
As an MSN professional nurse, you will be expected to examine data and scholarly evidence related to trends in order to make informed decisions and recommendations toward policymaking. This assignment will help you select data from sources and examine the scholarly evidence available about a trending topic.
Prompt
In order to complete this activity, you may choose to build on your prior exploration of a healthcare trend or select a trend that is new to you.
Imagine you are working with a healthcare team to improve outcomes related to your trend. You are required to provide inputs of current evidence and data sources related to the trend. As you work, reference the Nursing – Graduate Shapiro Library Guide, which is linked in the Start Here module of your course, to support your literature search. Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:
1. CDC Data: Identify data related to a trend from the perspective of protecting the population. Use the Data & Statistics webpage on the CDC website and select the topic most closely related to the trend available on the page. You may need to conduct further research and select other links to identify one specific data point or data set related to the trend.
2. Healthy People Data: Identify data related to a trend from the perspective of promoting health. Use the Data2020 webpage of the Healthy People website and select Search from the Select a Topic drop-down menu. This will allow you to view historical data related to the objective and see how a trend changes over time.
3. Local Data: Explain how to find additional sources related to a trend from the practice setting perspective. Use the following questions to guide your response. You also have the option of discussing these with others in your practice setting.
o What type of data are you looking for?
o What roles or departments in your practice setting would you need to interact with to obtain the data?
o What steps would you follow to access the data?
4. Locating Scholarly Sources: Select two scholarly articles on the identified trend through a literature search. We recommend using the following databases from the Shapiro Library to support your work:
o CINAHL Complete from EBSCO
o Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition from EBSCO
5. Evaluating Scholarly Sources: Compare differences and similarities between the selected scholarly sources. Address the following questions as you work:
o What is the trend?
o What is the significance of the trend?
o What are the trend’s driving factors?
o How are the findings in the sources similar or different?
Guidelines for Submission
Submit your completed Module Five Activity Trend Evidence Worksheet, using between 250 and 300 words to formulate your responses. Sources should be cited according to APA style.
https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/data-search/
https://www.cdc.gov/datastatistics/index.html