Emergency plan with the local long-term care facility (LTCF)

Assignment:

For this assignment, you are given a real-world scenario as follows:

The Medical Director has assigned the Director of Nursing (DON) for the local health department to develop a plan to handle an emergency plan with the local long-term care facility (LTCF). She will serve on a team with the health department emergency preparedness coordinator and the epidemiologist. Neither the DON nor the medical director has been in their current positions for more than six months.

• The DON has resided in the area for several years, had worked at the local hospital for three years before obtaining her current position.
• The medical director came from another health department in another state. He had been involved in a hurricane that impacted the local nursing home where two patients died due to a foodborne outbreak.
• The emergency preparedness coordinator is experienced and works with the state-level emergency preparedness team.
• The epidemiologist has lived in the area for 20 years and has been the epidemiologist for over 15 years at this health department.
• The nurse is assigned to develop a nursing protocol regarding patient care to be included in the disaster plan coordinating agreement between the LTCF and the health department.

The health department team will work with representatives from the LTCF nursing department.

Use the following template to develop this policy/protocol:

• Designated authority.
• Describe the problem. List the proposed nursing diagnosis.
• Background: Introduce the business case for why developing this protocol is necessary. Provide the data and information to support the protocol.
• Identify other persons needed to serve on this team from both the LTCF and the health department.
• Generate a list of what information about the nursing care facility is needed to develop this plan and delineate assignments to the appropriate persons.
• Objectives: Delineate one to three objectives for this plan. Make sure the objectives are in behavioral terms, are measurable, and realistic.  Include timeframes.
• Proposed Interventions: Develop a comprehensive list of action steps for both the LTCF and the health department to be included in this plan.
• Expected Benefits: Describe the expected benefits and outcomes of the interventions taken.
• Audit and evaluation: Describe how the outcomes will be evaluated. Propose what and how pertinent audit findings will be used to evaluate the success of the plan. Describe how ongoing monitoring and review of the strategies will be done. Emergency plan with the local long-term care facility (LTCF)
• Keep statements succinct, clear, and without opinions.

Assignment Expectations

Length: No more than 3 pages. Answers must use the template for development.

Structure: Include a title page and reference page in APA style. These do not count towards the 3 page limit.

References: Use the appropriate APA style in-text citations and references for all resources utilized to answer the questions. Include at least three (3) scholarly sources to support your claims.

Format: Save your assignment as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx).

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.

Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.

APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.

Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.

LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.