Characteristic 2

Demonstrate effective systems leadership and interprofessional collaboration skills that strengthen practice and healthcare delivery in the development, implementation, and evaluation of practice models, guidelines, health policies, and standards that impact the outcomes of healthcare.

Being a systems thinker and leader is what I would consider one of my assets.  I have been fortunate to be in positions that required me to look at the big picture and how decisions can affect the whole and not just a small subset.  My DNP project was based upon a interprofessional approach to care based upon a EBP guideline.  I was able to develop my tool in the clinic EHR and conduct pilot trial prior to my project start date. This allowed me to gain feedback from those interprofessional student team members using the tool.  This provided valuable information that led to modifications of the tool that would make it more useful in the daily clinic life of the teams.  I also embarked on an inter-professional meeting with the clinic leadership to discuss the full ramifications and needs of the clinic as we developed the EHR tool. 

I feel like we engaged in several systems leadership efforts through this program.  In NUSC 7003, Leading and Managing Complex Health Systems I served as the team leader for our group as we developed our community outreach program to increase awareness and screening for colorectal screening in Arkansas.  We focused on Healthy People 2020 action goals of:

In NUSC 7211, Quality Outcomes Management, I developed a quality improvement proposal to improve the influenza vaccination program for patient seen at the 12th Street Health and Wellness Center.  This aligns the clinic with the Centers for Disease Control's 2020 goal of 70% of the population receiving the influence vaccination across the country.  In Arkansas, as we age we are less compliant with receiving our influenza vaccinations yearly.