NURS-FPX4500 Assessment 2: Leadership Strategies for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

Course

NURS-FPX4500: Practicing in the Community to Improve Population Health (RN–BSN quality and safety leadership focus in community and ambulatory settings).

Overview

In this second assessment, you shift from individual health promotion planning to examining how nursing leadership can strengthen quality improvement and patient safety for a priority issue that affects your community or practice setting. You will identify a specific safety or quality problem, analyze its causes and consequences, and propose practical leadership strategies and quality improvement actions that are appropriate for a BSN-prepared nurse. The goal is to demonstrate how you can influence systems of care and foster a culture of safety and continuous improvement in community or population-health contexts.

Assessment Type and Length

• Individual written assessment (academic paper, APA style).

• 3–4 page paper (approximately 1,000–1,200 words), excluding title page and reference list.

• Double-spaced.

Assignment Instructions

Write a 3–4 page paper that analyzes a clearly defined safety or quality problem in a community, primary care, outpatient, or transitional care setting and proposes leadership strategies and quality improvement actions a BSN nurse can use to address it. Draw on current evidence, quality and safety frameworks, and realistic constraints in your setting. Use clear headings, professional tone, and current APA style for citations and references.

Required Paper Sections

1. Problem Description and Context

• Describe the practice or community setting.

• Identify a specific quality or safety problem.

• Summarize evidence or local data demonstrating the scope and impact of the problem.

2. Contributing Factors and Root Causes

• Analyze contributing factors such as human factors, workflow issues, technology limitations, policy gaps, and social determinants of health.

• Use a simple quality improvement or systems-thinking tool to structure the root cause analysis.

• Explain how current processes break down and create safety risks.

3. Leadership Role of the BSN Nurse

• Describe how a BSN-prepared nurse can lead improvement efforts without formal authority.

• Discuss leadership behaviors such as advocacy, team communication, coaching peers, and modeling safe practices.

• Link leadership actions to a recognized leadership or quality framework.

4. Proposed Quality Improvement and Safety Strategies

• Propose 3–5 feasible strategies to address the identified problem.

• Explain how each strategy targets specific root causes.

• Describe interdisciplinary collaboration during implementation.

• Support strategies with current evidence or guidelines.

5. Culture of Safety and Continuous Improvement

• Explain how you will promote a culture of safety and learning.

• Address how resistance, fear of blame, or competing priorities will be managed.

• Describe how these actions support long-term reliability and patient-centered care.

6. Measurement, Evaluation, and Sustainability

• Identify 2–3 outcome or process measures.

• Explain how data will be reviewed and shared.

• Describe how improvements will be sustained over time.

7. Conclusion

• Summarize the quality or safety problem and key leadership strategies.

• Reinforce the role of BSN-level leadership in improving community and population health outcomes.

In a busy community clinic serving adults with multiple chronic conditions, the absence of a standardized medication reconciliation process has led to frequent discrepancies between patient reports, pharmacy records, and electronic health documentation. A BSN-prepared nurse can lead a focused quality improvement initiative by piloting a reconciliation checklist, educating staff, and collaborating with pharmacists. Evidence shows that structured, nurse-led medication reconciliation processes reduce errors and improve patient safety (Mueller et al., 2018).

Effective quality improvement and patient safety initiatives depend heavily on nursing leadership that emphasizes systems thinking, interprofessional collaboration, and continuous learning. BSN-prepared nurses play a critical role in fostering a culture of safety by encouraging open communication, supporting error reporting, and using data to guide improvement efforts. These leadership behaviors align with global patient safety priorities and contribute to more reliable, patient-centered care across community and ambulatory settings (World Health Organization, 2021).

References

1. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2019). Patient safety primers: Patient safety 101.
   https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/patient-safety-101

2. Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2020). How-to guide: Improving transitions from the hospital to community settings.
   http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/Tools/HowtoGuideImprovingTransitionHospitalCommunitySettings.aspx

3. Sammer, C. E., Lykens, K., Singh, K. P., Mains, D. A., & Lackan, N. A. (2010). What is patient safety culture? Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 42(2), 156–165.
   https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1547-5069.2009.01330.x

4. World Health Organization. (2021). Global patient safety action plan 2021–2030.
   https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240032700

5. Mitchell, P. H. (2018). Defining patient safety and quality care. In R. G. Hughes (Ed.), Patient safety and quality: An evidence-based handbook for nurses.
   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2681/

6. Mueller, S. K., Sponsler, K. C., Kripalani, S., & Schnipper, J. L. (2018). Hospital-based medication reconciliation practices: A systematic review. Archives of Internal Medicine, 172(14), 1057–1069.
   https://doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2012.2246