NURS FPX 9000 Assessment 1 Project, Preceptor, and Practicum Interest Form (PPPIF)

NURS FPX 9000 Assessment 1

Project, Preceptor, and Practicum Interest Form (PPPIF)

Student Name

Capella University

NURS-FPX 9000 Doctor of Nursing Practice 1

Professor Name

Date

Project, Preceptor, and Practicum Interest Form (PPPIF)

Project Site Description

The proposed practicum site is an acute care hospital in upstate New York, a component of a larger healthcare system. The facility offers a comprehensive range of medical services, including emergency care, medical-surgical units, and specialty services. The system provides a comprehensive range of medical care, encompassing both primary and specialized services, including cardiac surgery, oncology, and neurology. It is a system that has more than 2,000 healthcare providers and maintains affiliations with the medical associates at the practicum site (Quality Improvement Director, personal communication, January 18, 2025).

The acute care facilities treat a wide range of patients in the capital region, and the emergency departments, inpatient units, and outpatient clinics have thousands of patient visits each week in the healthcare network. The facility has in place extensive quality improvement programs and clinical education programmes, with appropriate infrastructure, resources, and institutional support to enable the successful delivery of doctoral-level evidence-based practice improvement initiatives.

Identified Problem or Gap in Practice

Compliance with hand hygiene among the nursing staff in acute care settings at the practicum site is a significant gap in infection prevention practice, with both clinical and economic consequences. The mean hand hygiene compliance rates in the facility are approximately 45-50%, which is below the optimal patient safety rates (Infection Prevention Manager, personal communication, May 15, 2025).

The less-than-optimal compliance is one of the direct causes of healthcare-associated infections, which affect 7 of every 100 patients in developed countries and 15 of every 100 patients in developing countries in acute care hospitals (World Health Organization, 2021). Average rates of hand sanitation without specific improvement initiatives remain at around 40 percent; however, in high-acuity care, including intensive treatment departments, adherence rates average around 60 percent (World Health Organization (WHO), 2023). The existing compliance gaps serve as evidence of the need to implement evidence-based interventions that enhance patient safety outcomes.

Healthcare-related infections remain a significant issue in acute care worldwide. Recent studies indicate that compliance with hand sanitation standards during the delivery of medical services remains unsatisfactory worldwide, with an average of 59.6 percent compliance in critical care units as of the year 2018, and a wide gap between the high-income and low-income countries (64.5 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively) (WHO, 2025). The financial burden is also quite high, and the overall direct costs of HAIs to healthcare facilities are estimated to be between $ 28 billion and $ 45 billion annually (Chahardehi & Ghasemi, 2023).

The practicum site has prioritized hand hygiene compliance as one of its quality improvement initiatives following internal audits that reported inconsistent compliance with the WHO’s 5 Moments across the nursing units (Quality Improvement Director, personal communication, January 18, 2025). The implementation of evidence-based hand hygiene interventions, particularly the WHO’s 5 Moments of Hand Hygiene interventions, is urgently required because appropriate hand hygiene can prevent up to 50% of the avoidable infections acquired during healthcare delivery (WHO, 2021). The 12-week deployment plan will also align with the evidence-based quality improvement timeframe and provide sufficient time to effect behavior change and achieve measurable compliance improvement.

Quality Improvement and Intervention Approach

The introduction of a systematic quality improvement intervention based on the WHO’s 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene framework is an evidence-based solution to eliminating poor hand hygiene compliance in the acute care environment (WHO, 2021). Studies have proven that multimodal interventions, which incorporate all five elements of the WHO strategy (system change, training and education, evaluation and feedback, reminders in the workplace, and institutional safety climate), produce significant improvements in the quality of hand hygiene practices (WHO, 2021).

A 5-year multi-pronged hand hygiene program based on the WHO had a significant positive effect on alcohol-based hand sanitizer consumption in the form of 4.0-4.4 L/1000 patient days in the pre-implementation phase and 10.4-34.4 L/1000 patient days in the implementation phase, with an increase in monthly consumption being statistically significant (Suzuki et al., 2020). The results support the implementation of systematic hand hygiene improvement interventions in acute care facilities.

Evidence-based interventions have been shown to result in measurable increases in hand hygiene compliance rates and cost-effectiveness. Moreover, video-monitoring systems used to track hand hygiene compliance with the WHO’s five moments protocol recorded an overall staff compliance rate of 88%, with a cost-effectiveness of $0.91 per moment and an operational efficiency of 64 seconds per moment (McKay et al., 2022).

Structured monitoring strategies should also be included in the plan, as the hand hygiene self-assessment tool (HHSAF) is a type of assessment that, when used regularly, allows for tracing progress in these areas over time (Suzuki et al., 2020). The 12-week implementation period aligns with evidence on maintaining behavioral change through continuous reinforcement and periodic review of compliance measurement.

Additional Information for Mentor and Site-Based Learning Team

The proposed measure will require a baseline assessment of the current hand sanitation stations and compliance rates. The practicum facility maintains stringent infection control practices across different emergency medical facilities. The institution operates with established quality improvement systems and electronic patient records systems. The training materials for personnel and ethanol-based sanitizing stations are currently available in clinical service areas.

The practical observation training of adherence monitoring will require designated personnel and standard assessment tools. The WHO hand hygiene self-assessment tool is a systematic evaluation tool that assesses institutional preparedness (Kraker et al., 2022). Electronic observation systems can supplement direct observation to obtain a complete set of data. Stakeholders involved in stakeholder engagement are the nursing leadership, infection prevention specialists, and frontline healthcare workers. The considerations involve budgetary issues such as training materials, monitoring equipment, and staff time to be devoted to auditing. The integration with existing performance improvement measures makes it easier to monitor long-term compliance and organizational accountability.

Population Description

The target population will include nursing personnel, such as registered nurses, who deal directly with patients in acute care hospitals. The sample size used consisted of registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nursing assistants who work in medical-surgical units. The staff members have varying levels of experience, ranging from recent graduates to experienced professionals. The population includes the nurses who work at all shifts, including evenings, days, and nights. The educational levels include diplomas, baccalaureate degrees, and advanced nursing degrees.

Clinical specializations are: general medical-surgical nursing, critical care, emergency medicine, and specialty units. The age demographics are varied between the early twenties and pre-retirement years with different generational views (Assaye et al., 2020)—employment status: full-time, part-time, and per diem nursing staff. The experience with hand hygiene training varies among staff members, depending on the orientation programs they have attended. The population works in high-acuity, high-paced environments with frequent transitions in care. The core population targeted by the WHO My 5 Moments intervention implementation is the population.

Scheduling Availability for Virtual Check-In

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