Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

Walden University Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue-Step-By-Step Guide

This guide will demonstrate how to complete the Walden University Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue assignment based on general principles of academic writing. Here, we will show you the A, B, Cs of completing an academic paper, irrespective of the instructions. After guiding you through what to do, the guide will leave one or two sample essays at the end to highlight the various sections discussed below.

How to Research and Prepare for Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

Whether one passes or fails an academic assignment such as the Walden University Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue depends on the preparation done beforehand. The first thing to do once you receive an assignment is to quickly skim through the requirements. Once that is done, start going through the instructions one by one to clearly understand what the instructor wants. The most important thing here is to understand the required format—whether it is APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.

After understanding the requirements of the paper, the next phase is to gather relevant materials. The first place to start the research process is the weekly resources. Go through the resources provided in the instructions to determine which ones fit the assignment. After reviewing the provided resources, use the university library to search for additional resources. After gathering sufficient and necessary resources, you are now ready to start drafting your paper.

How to Write the Introduction for Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

The introduction for the Walden University Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue is where you tell the instructor what your paper will encompass. In three to four statements, highlight the important points that will form the basis of your paper. Here, you can include statistics to show the importance of the topic you will be discussing. At the end of the introduction, write a clear purpose statement outlining what exactly will be contained in the paper. This statement will start with “The purpose of this paper…” and then proceed to outline the various sections of the instructions.

How to Write the Body for Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

After the introduction, move into the main part of the Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue assignment, which is the body. Given that the paper you will be writing is not experimental, the way you organize the headings and subheadings of your paper is critically important. In some cases, you might have to use more subheadings to properly organize the assignment. The organization will depend on the rubric provided. Carefully examine the rubric, as it will contain all the detailed requirements of the assignment. Sometimes, the rubric will have information that the normal instructions lack.

Another important factor to consider at this point is how to do citations. In-text citations are fundamental as they support the arguments and points you make in the paper. At this point, the resources gathered at the beginning will come in handy. Integrating the ideas of the authors with your own will ensure that you produce a comprehensive paper. Also, follow the given citation format. In most cases, APA 7 is the preferred format for nursing assignments.

How to Write the Conclusion for Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

After completing the main sections, write the conclusion of your paper. The conclusion is a summary of the main points you made in your paper. However, you need to rewrite the points and not simply copy and paste them. By restating the points from each subheading, you will provide a nuanced overview of the assignment to the reader.

How to Format the References List for Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

The very last part of your paper involves listing the sources used in your paper. These sources should be listed in alphabetical order and double-spaced. Additionally, use a hanging indent for each source that appears in this list. Lastly, only the sources cited within the body of the paper should appear here.

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Sample Answer for Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

 The value of nursing care has a direct relationship with quality and safety outcomes. The nursing shortage is a persistent national health issue affecting the ability of nurses to provide effective nursing care to patients; thus, undermining the safety and quality of care. The effects of the nursing shortage in healthcare are multifaceted impacting nurses, patients, and healthcare organizations. Nursing shortage leads to work overload, resulting in burnout and stress for nurses. According to studies, burnout and stress has multiple negative outcomes, including medication errors, adverse events, high rates of infections, patient safety issues, poor nurse performance, high turnover rates, increased length of hospital stay, and negative patient experience(Dall’Ora et al., 2020). These factors have quality and safety implications as hospitals struggle to enhance the patient experience, reduce infection, adverse events, length of hospital stay, and other quality indicators and improve overall population health. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the nursing shortage at my organization and identify possible strategies for remedying the healthcare stressor from scholarly sources.

National Healthcare Issue/Stressor and Its Impact on the Organization

A recent quality assessment and audit at my organization revealed several issues negatively impacting quality and safety outcomes. First, the review noted a higher rate of hospital-acquired infections (HAI) than the value of last year’s review. Secondly, the assessment also pointed out that some patients had a longer hospital stay (LOS) than necessary. Thirdly, the review revealed significant cases of medication errors and adverse events such as avoidable patient falls. A separate assessment investigating the experience of nurses and patients with work and care, respectively, also showed that nurses are stressed because of the high w

orkload. A significant portion of the patient population surveyed reported a low level of satisfaction with the services and care experience. Equally, nurses reported high workload, stress, and low job satisfaction.

Summary of Two Articles

The article, A nursing shortage – a prospect of global and local policies, examines the factors driving nursing shortage around the world, primarily, the rising population of senior citizens. According to the article, the nursing shortage has no single cause but multiple interrelated factors. Some of the contributors tothe nursing shortage include ineffective planning and utilization of nursing resources, demographic changes, and poor recruitment practices (Marć et al., 2018). The authors provide strategies for addressing the nursing shortage from policies point of view. Similarly, the article, Discuss Reasons for Acute and Chronic Problems with The Crisis of Nursing, acknowledges that recruitment and retention of nurses remains

a crisis in countries worldwide. The author argues that one of the causes of the perennial nursing shortage is the nursing education structure, which dwells on theory and allocates less time for practical exper

ience (Wada, 2020). As such, nurses enter the profession with less practical experience, giving them anxiety and a high tendency to quit. Additionally, the article notes that time constraints and high workloads limit the nurses’ ability to deliver ideal care(Wada, 2020).

Recognizing the negative implications of the nursing shortage, organizations have come up with strategies attempting to address the issue and enhance patient outcomes. One of the strategies implemented in other organizations is an onboarding program to reduce new nurses’ turnover rates. A recent RN Staffing report reveals that the turnover rate for novice nurses is 18.7%, a 2.8% increase from the 2020 survey (NSI Nursing Solutions, 2021). Novice nurses are likely to resign because of poor organizational culture, bullying, challenging clinical environment, and feelings of isolation. Onboarding programs help new nurses feel welcomed, supported, and part of the community. The second strategy used in other organizations is long-term training and development of nurses. Studies link training and development to motivation, staff engagement, better performance, and staff satisfaction, reducing turnover rates (Zahoor & Mustafa, 2020).

Summary of Strategies Used To Address the Organizational Impact of Nursing Shortage

The articles selected provide various strategies for addressing nurse shortages. According to Wada (2020),higher wages attract and retain nurses leading to a low turnover rate. Additionally, improving the relationship between nurses and physicians and other healthcare workers is essential as nurses want recognition and respect, enhancing motivation. An additional strategy is to identify and address the negative factors affecting the work environment, such as hard shifts and heavy workload. Similarly, managerial support and the adoption of information technology to eliminate manual work are also strategies for improving nurse retention rates (Wada, 2020). Strategies reported by Marć et al. (2018) include salary regulation to ensure fair compensation, creating a positive work environment, implementing information technology, and introducing lifelong learning for professional development. My organization can benefit from these strategies to improve staff retention. For example, introducing an onboarding program for novice nurses is a good idea, as most face challenges acclimatizing with the organizational culture, work environment, and challenging shifts, causing them frustrations that lead to turnover. Nevertheless, the organization will face challenges implementing some of these strategies; for example, salary increase and training and development require resources, yet, the organization’s financial resources are already strained.

Conclusion

Nurse shortage is a profound health stressor that undermines quality and safe care services to patients and populations. Scholarly articles provide several strategies to address the problem, promote nurse retention, and improve the quality and safety of care. One strategy is increasing wages to ensure fair compensation for the challenging nursing work and enhance motivation. The second strategy is introducing training and development to help nurses learn new skills and knowledge and attain professional development. Other techniques are creating a positive work environment, implementing an onboarding program for new nurses, effective management, and implementing information technology to reduce workload.

References

Dall’Ora, C., Ball, J., Reinius, M., & Griffiths, P. (2020). Burnout in nursing: a theoretical review. Hum Resour Health, 18, 41. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-020-00469-9.

Marć, M., Bartosiewicz, R., Burzyńska, J., Chmiel, Z., & Januszewicz, P. (2018). A nursing shortage – a prospect of global and local policies. International Nursing Review, 9-16. https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12473.

NSI Nursing Solutions. (2021). 2021 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report. NSI Nursing Solutions, Inc.

Wada, Y. (2020). Discuss reasons for acute and chronic problems with the crisis of nursing shortage in relation to nursing education and review The Strategies and. Nursing & Primary Care, 4(4), 1-4. https://www.scivisionpub.com/pdfs/discuss-reasons-for-acute-and-chronic-problems-with-the-crisis-of-nursing-shortage-in-relation-to-nursing-education-and-review-the-1337.pdf.

Zahoor, H., & Mustafa, N. (2020). Training and development and health workers’ motivation and performance. Intraders.

Sample Answer 2 for Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

Among the responsibilities of nurses in the care setting is to offer safe and acceptable patient care. However, offering safe and appropriate care is never straightforward as various obstacles face such efforts. The implication is that these obstacles have to be addressed by applying various strategies that can help in effectively removing them. One of such problems is the heavy workload (Molero et al., 2018). The heavy workload in the care setting has been associated with various adverse impacts such as nurse burnout, high turnover, medical errors, and poor patient services (Sturm et al., 2019). Therefore, this paper aims to explore heavy workload as a healthcare issue. Therefore, the issue will be described and its impacts on the organization. In addition, a brief summary of two articles that address the issues will be given and how other entities address the issue. Besides, this paper will summarize the strategies used in the literature materials to address the impact of the issue and how such strategies might positively or negatively impact the organization.

Heavy Workload and Its Impact

The heavy nursing workload is among the common healthcare problems usually caused by a shortage of nursing staff. Heavy workload occurs when the hours that a nurse has to work caring for patients exceed the ideal duration that they can serve to effectively offer quality patient care. Whenever there is a high workload, various adverse impacts can result (Sturm et al., 2019). For instance, there are increased incidences of patients’ death in some cases due to poor care. In addition, recent data also shows that when there is a heavy workload, the nurse spends less time observing and taking care of the individual patients as they have to strive and offer the same care services to other patients as well within the same time period.

Indeed, the heavy workload was at some duration associated with a 20% increase in medical errors, which negatively impacted the organization, the staff, and the patients.  Heavy workload also leads to higher incidences of nurse turnover as the current staff may experience nurse burnout; hence they try to seek lighter duties in other organizations. The end result is that the organization has to spend more money in recruiting new staff to fill the vacant positions.

Summary of Articles on Heavy Workload

Holland et al. (2019) conducted a study that focused on examining the connection between nurse workload, nurse well-being, and intention to leave the occupation. These researchers used an online survey as the methodology where they prompted close to three thousand responses from various participants to get their view of the high nurse workload. From the analysis performed on the responses, the researchers realized that a high workload is closely connected with the nursing staff’s desire to leave the nursing occupation. Such a desire to quit the nursing profession was also shown to be mediated by the work-life balance satisfaction among the nurses (Holland et al., 2019). The analysis also indicated that the use of organizational supports as offered through a high involvement work practice are key in mitigating the intentions by the nurses to quit the profession due to heavy workload. Therefore, human resource management strategies should be aligned to offer such support since the aspects are within their control.

Another literature that addresses the issue of heavy workload is an article authored by MacPhee et al. (2017). This study explored the relationship between various workload factors and the nurse and patient outcomes. The researchers employed a cross-sectional correlational study of four hundred and seventy-two acute nurses working in Canada. Some of the workload factors explored include patient dependency and patient acuity, perceptions of heavy workloads, compromised standards and pending pieces of work, medication errors resulting from nurses’ actions, urinary tract infections, and patient falls.

The researchers noted that task-level interruptions and heavy workloads substantially impact the nurse and patient outcomes from the analysis. In addition, pending tasks were shown to mediate between the patient and nurse outcomes and heavy workloads and between the patient and nurse outcomes and interruptions (MacPhee et al., 2017). Besides, the researchers also noted that the compromised professional nursing standard mediates the correlation between nurse outcomes and heavy workloads and between nurse outcomes and interruptions. The researchers suggest that administrators need to collaborate with the nurses to foster the process of identifying work environment strategies to address the effects of workload.

Various organizations have employed different strategies to address the heavy workload. One of the strategies is that the organization focuses on planning, implementing, and evaluating staffing and workload practices at various levels, such as tactical, logistical, and strategic. Such a step helps in having staff that can facilitate the delivery of ethical, culturally sensitive, competent, and safe patient care (Muabbar & Alsharqi, 2021). The other use methods include using a strategic nursing staffing process by aligning the budget with the required staffing levels that meet the patient needs.

Summary of Strategies Used To Address the Organizational Impact of Heavy Workload

From the articles summarized, the researcher suggested various strategies that can be used in addressing the organization’s impact of high workload. One of the strategies is the use of a high involvement work practice to mitigate the impact. The other strategy is the use of collaboration between the administrators and the nursing staff to formulate strategies that can substantially address the problem within the context (MacPhee et al., 2017). These suggestions can also be effective in our organization as appropriate use of the strategies is likely to lead to the desired improvements. On the other hand, these strategies may impact our organization negatively. For example, aligning the budget to the staffing needs may mean that the funds will have to be taken off other important projects, impacting negatively on the organization.

Conclusion

High workload as a healthcare problem is a major problem that adversely impacts patients, nursing staff, and the hospitals. Therefore, efforts should be focused on lowering it down or addressing the adverse impacts. This write-up has therefore explored the high workload among the nurses. In addition, two research articles addressing the issue have also been explored, and the findings presented and discussed.

References

Holland, P., Tham, T. L., Sheehan, C., & Cooper, B. (2019). The impact of perceived workload on nurse satisfaction with work-life balance and intention to leave the occupation. Applied nursing research, 49, 70-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2019.06.001.

MacPhee, M., Dahinten, V. S., & Havaei, F. (2017). The impact of heavy perceived nurse workloads on patient and nurse outcomes. Administrative Sciences, 7(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci7010007.

Molero, M. D. M., Pérez-Fuentes, M. D. C., & Gázquez, J. J. (2018). Analysis of the mediating role of self-efficacy and self-esteem on the effect of workload on burnout’s influence on nurses’ plans to work longer. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 2605. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02605

Muabbar, H., & Alsharqi, O. (2021). The impact of short-term solutions of nursing shortage on nursing outcome, nurse perceived quality of care, and patient safety. American Journal of Nursing Research, 9(2), 35-44. https://doi.org/10.12691/ajnr-9-2-1

Sturm, H., Rieger, M. A., Martus, P., Ueding, E., Wagner, A., Holderried, M., … & WorkSafeMed Consortium. (2019). Do perceived working conditions and patient safety culture correlate with objective workload and patient outcomes? A cross-sectional explorative study from a German university hospital. PLoS One, 14(1), e0209487. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209487

Sample Answer 3 for Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

Introduction

It is not new that the nurses and other healthcare departments undergo immense stress and burnout during the hours. A nurse’s role is always stressful, leading to stress and the generation of burnout.  The nursing profession is a very demanding job, and sometimes the expectations are that they work for more hours than the duration of their duty (Poghosyan et al., 2018). The discussion aims to know more about the nursing profession’s stress and burnout, the reasons behind it, and the available options to solve the issue from both the nurses and the organization. The topic is essential to address concisely to help the organization and the nurses cope with stress and burnout in the work area.

Stress in current times is known as that prevalent phenomenon everywhere: domestic, family, or the workplace (Burton et al., 2017). Some reports claim that 26% of the nurses leave the job because of the nursing profession’s stress that they cannot cope up and exit from the position. Burnout is one of the reasons also for their leaving. The lack of adequate staffing in the organizations put immense pressure on the nurses to work extra, adding to their workload. It generates job dissatisfaction, ultimately leads to stress in nurses’ lives, which eventually compels them to decide concerning the job’s continuation (White et al., 2020). Reports say that for about 50% and above nurses, the European employees experience stress in the health care department and America. The cost for managing stress generated from an individual’s collective reasons has been calculating to 50 billion dollars in Great Britain. The NHS guidelines for treating illness concern the generation of pressure estimated from 5% to 10% of GNP in the country (Odigie, 2016).

Literature Review

According to Koinis et al. (2015), job stress leads to the emergence of disturbances in the family matters of the nurses’ personal life. Nurse’s burnout is nothing but the exhaustive feeling of the nurses they experience in their workplace, and the reasons accounted for this behavior are the lack of motivation and the development of frustration, resulting in the efficiency of their work. The study was done three months from July 2010 to October 2010, considering 200 mental healthcare facilities with professionals of age 21-58 years. There was a great deal of stress in the department staff by having the questionnaires get filled by the facility staff’s different levels and a deficient level of stress management practices employed by the organization to reduce stress on the teams.

According to Mudallal et al. (2017), power reflects the ability to control or influence others concerning their behaviors and attitudes. Workplace empowerment is to be encouraged, which will enable the nurses to access all the organization’s vital resources and support to do their work efficiently by having all the opportunity to gain all the necessary experience in their work by accomplishing the goal assigned duty. Burnout is one of the major problems that is a costly one for both the employee and the organizations, characterized by the reductions in the nurses’ physical activity, which has very much required for the patient’s efficient care. It can also lead to the development of insomnia, depression, and fatigue in the nurses, leading to absenteeism, turnover rates, and the patient’s quality of care in a health care department.

Impact on the health care organization

The system gets very severely affected by the stress of the nurses and the issues of burnout. The reasons, as discussed above, are major ones to get the nurses on the verge of the pressures and burnout. Some reports say 34.6% of the nurses suffer from emotional exhaustion or EE, 28.8% of nurses are suffering from high depersonalization or DP, and 95.7% of nurses are suffering from the reduced level of personal accomplishments or PA (Wei et al., 2018). The requirement of the long working hour required in the healthcare facility due to low workforces generates stress and burnout in the nurses. The nurses cannot do the assigned duty with the utmost competency necessary to provide holistic care (Palumbo et al., 2017). The nurses start to skip out on the work, and then they gradually leave their job. It ultimately adds up to the organization’s loss, and the reputation of the facility comes at stake. Not only physically but the nurses are also affected psychologically, which can be a potential reason to harm the patient when the mental status of the nurse is not stable enough to look after the patient. Due to this, the organization may face some legal issues if the patient files any case in the name of the concerned facility, which will impact the organization on a large scale on a large platform. Getting the revival strategy will become more complex.

Strategies to be adopted by the organization.

The nature of the management strategies for coping with stress in an organization’s staff is one of the main criteria to be looked upon by the organization’s hierarchical authorities. It includes specific steps to be followed, consisting of the strategies to be developed to modify the jobs to sustain them. Socializing the employees and selecting is to be done in a very organized way by giving the full description of the job requirements to get a clear head before the necessary work (Udod et al., 2017). Another strategy to be employed by the organization is to manage the changing requirements of the staff. Change is constant and must address every situation, and the approach needs to be modern enough to understand the condition (Nahavandi et al., 2015). Getting adequate numbers of staff is also essential. Healthcare forces need to be reconfiguring and redesigned (Rickets & Fraher, 2013).

Conclusion

The study has dominantly shown that workforce shortage is one of the prime reasons for the generation of stress and burnout in the staff of the organization, which needs to look after. The research shows that stress impacts the healthcare department’s environment negatively, resulting in the decrement of the quality of life, illness concerning both the nurses’ physical and mental health, resulting in the organization’s overall poor outcome. Intervention is to focus on the leadership style in the healthcare department, and it needs some transformation from time to time so that the staff can cope with the emerging situation.

References

Burton et al., (2017). How effective are mindfulness‐based interventions for reducing stress among healthcare professionals? A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Stress and Health, 33(1), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2673

Koinis et al., (2015). The Impact of Healthcare Workers Job Environment on Their Mental-emotional Health. Coping Strategies: The Case of a Local General Hospital. Health psychology research, 3(1), 1984. https://doi.org/10.4081/hpr.2015.1984

Mudallal, R. H., Othman, W. A. M., & Al Hassan, N. F. (2017). Nurses’ burnout: the influence of leader empowering behaviors, work conditions, and demographic traits. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 54, 0046958017724944. https://doi.10.1177/0046958017724944

Nahavandi et al., (2015). Organizational behavior. Sage Publications.

Odigie, A. (2016). Stress Management for Healthcare Professionals. Core.ac.UK. March 2021. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/45600493.pdf

Palumbo, M. V., Rambur, B., & Hart, V. (2017). Is health care payment reform impacting nurses’ work settings, roles, and education preparation? Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(6), 400-404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.11.005

Poghosyan, L., Norful, A. A., & Laugesen, M. J. (2018). Removing restrictions on nurse practitioners’ scope of practice in New York State: Physicians’ and nurse practitioners’ perspectives. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 30(6), 354-360. https://doi:10.1097/JXX.0000000000000040

Ricketts, T. C., & Fraher, E. P. (2013). Reconfiguring health workforce policy so that education, training, and the actual delivery of care are closely connected. Health Affairs, 32(11), 1874-1880. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0531

Udod et al., (2017). Role stressors and coping strategies among nurse managers. Leadership in Health Services. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHS-04-2016-0015

Wei et al., (2018). The state of the science of nurse work environments in the United States: A systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 5(3), 287-300. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352013218300309

White et al., (2020). Nursing homework environment, care quality, registered nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction. Geriatric Nursing, 41(2), 158-164. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197457219303325

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For assignments that need to be submitted to Lopes Write, 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.

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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.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource