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LP 2 Lecture Notes As you begin this course, identify something you would like to improve such as a daily process or procedure, a personal

LP 2 Lecture Notes As you begin this course, identify something you would like to improve such as a daily process or procedure, a personal habit or routine. This topic will become your Improvement Project for this course. This project must be something that YOU can change and take an active part in, not what should be changed. It can be work related or personal, but you must be the one making the changes and gathering the data to show success. Examples of an improvement project might be: family budget, time management, exercise and weight loss, a home improvement project, just to mention a few. Your improvement project can certainly be work related but keep in mind the time constraint of the course. This project is something that you start at the beginning of the class and continually work on over the next 11 weeks. You will learn about, and be encouraged to apply the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) Improvement model principles to make changes. Once you have determined what you want to change, you will set a goal and objectives and develop a plan of action. You will conduct a literature review pertinent to your project and assess the current practices and strategies proven to make improvements in your chosen area. For example, if your improvement project is time management, you will research sites such as EBSCO to obtain articles on time management or perhaps priority setting. This knowledge will permit you to base changes on research and evidence rather than \"because this is the way it should be done,\" or founded on traditions, myths, hunches, advice of colleagues, or outdated textbooks. In a report due at the end of the course, you will tell how you applied your research to your improvement project, what you did, and how you measured your accomplishment. To help get started, here are some hints: Set smaller goals with smaller steps. Gradual small steps motivate people toward larger change. For example, if you want to lose weight, change small aspects of your eating pattern. Resolve to have a salad tomorrow for lunch, and then do that for a week. Write down the steps you want to take in a datebook to make it concrete, and reward yourself for making the individual changes. Let's say you want to work on being more optimistic. Imagine what you would be like if you were optimistic. Imagine yourself going through a day at work if you were optimistic and confident, and then write that down in great detail. Now, you have specific aspects of that ideal of optimism to work toward. Pick one thing that the optimistic you is doing that you're not, and start working in that direction. 1 Frame your goals positively. Despite the proven health risks of certain habits, such as smoking, thinking about a habit in the negative will not help you nix it. Studies have shown that it's hard to get motivated about avoiding cancer, but easier to think about smelling better and saving money as reasons to quit smoking. So, if you want to quit doing something, think about the positive aspects of not doing it. Make sure you reward yourself for sticking to the plan along the way. If you are uncertain about what changes to make, develop a list of the benefits and costs of things you want to accomplish in the next year. Pay attention to what's driving you, often times it is pain that motivates people to change, or a new phase of life, or new information, or a possible promotion. This is as good a time as any to take inventory of yourself. What are your passions? What do you want to be doing better? Take time to think about who you are and how you want life to be. Real change happens because you yourself want it, not because others want it for you. Be specific. It's easy to get discouraged by a broad goal like "I'm going to improve my marriage," figure out exactly what it is that's not working for you, and then formulate a strategy for solving individual problems. In the marriage example, it's important to get realistic about what it is in your marriage that needs improvement. Then, spend some time keeping a diary and tracking what's going right and what's not, and come up with one thing you can do per week that would help the situation. The process of assessing the small actions you can take in the immediate future, and savoring the positive effects, can take a lot of pressure off and help you achieve larger goals. This combination improvement project report and research paper is the final for this course, but you will work on it in stages throughout the course in a guided manner. All college level work should be referenced, but with healthcare research and learning it is even more important for your work to be supported by evidence and research. First and most important, patient lives are at stake - there is no room for error or unsupported practice; second, as a healthcare professional you will have interactions with physicians and other highly educated individuals who expect a level of communication that is credible and accurate. Students may struggle with the detail and tenacity of APA use, but individuals who chose health care as a profession are certainly held at a higher standard. When I use the term "scholarly source", I mean a source that is peer reviewed or published in a recognized scholarly source, like a journal or a university publisher. How do you tell the difference between a scholarly source and other sources? Here are a few tips: 2 The key in looking for a scholarly source is to identify the mechanisms used to ensure that the article is of a high standard. Sometimes we just trust the reputation of a journal or publisher, and sometimes we actually look for a statement about the review process. Magazines, in general, do not have a review process, and their material is meant for a wider audience. It may be valuable, but it is not scholarly. Anyone can put anything up on the internet, and so the review process is all the more important. Is the journal published by a scholarly association or society, or a university, or a recognized scholarly publisher? If it is not one of these, then it may not be a scholarly journal. There are some scholarly journals that publish a web version, and in some cases they only publish a web version. The fact that the journal is on the web should not necessarily detract from using it. The real issue is still the scholarly process it has gone through. Are the articles reviewed in some way? You may find a statement in the masthead about reviewing policy. If the articles are sent out to "peers", or other members in a field, for anonymous review, that's a good indication that the journal is scholarly. How about reference works like Wikipedia or About.com? A wiki is a community-edited document, one which anyone can add to or change. That's not exactly peer review, because the reviewers aren't necessarily people who have studied an area. Wikipedia might, though, give you ideas to follow up elsewhere, and that's fine, the same goes for About.com. You should be quite suspicious of other works on the web. Just typing something into Google will not give you reliable results. You might, though, look for portal pages for particular topics or issues. Sometimes academics will make pages of the best resources on the web. These can be useful, but even many of these resources are not likely peer reviewed, and so would probably not be up to the level required for your papers. Many students are tempted to do all their work with web-based sources. This is a mistake. Even with a lot of work being put on the web, there is no substitute for the library (NAU Online is a great library resource). Make sure to use it. 3

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