| Course | NR 543 Information Workflow in Healthcare |
|---|---|
| Week | 1 |
| Paper type | Discussion post with two replies |
| Length | About 580 words |
| Format | Discussion post with APA 7 citations |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | MSN, Nursing Informatics |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 543 Week 1
Week 1 Discussion: Initial Post
Twenty-One Hours From Order to Scan, Forty-Eight Minutes of Work: What One Inpatient Brain MRI on Our Stroke Unit Taught Me About Elapsed Time and Touch Time
One Request
I am a nurse informaticist in a 350-bed hospital, and much of my work this year has been on the stroke and neuroscience unit. Last month I followed one ordinary request from start to finish: a brain MRI ordered at 9:40 a.m. for a patient admitted overnight with a suspected small stroke. The scan was completed at 6:55 a.m. the next day, just over 21 hours later. The neurologist had hoped to see the result on morning rounds the day before discharge, and instead saw it the following morning, which added a day to the stay.
Where the Time Went
I asked everyone who touched the request how long they spent on it. The provider took about four minutes to enter the order. A radiologist took about three minutes to assign the scan protocol, but the order waited two and a half hours in the protocol queue before that. The nurse took about twelve minutes to complete the MRI safety screening form with the patient's daughter, because the patient had aphasia and could not answer questions about implants; the form waited nearly seven hours for that, because the nurse had five other patients and the daughter arrived after work. The MRI scheduler spent two minutes assigning a slot, but could not schedule until the screening form was complete. The next open inpatient slot was overnight. Transport took about seven minutes of work and forty minutes of waiting. The scan itself took twenty minutes.
Adding it up, about forty-eight minutes of work were spent on the request across six people. The rest of the twenty-one hours, about 96% of the elapsed time, the request was waiting: in a queue, for a person, for information or for a slot. Nobody was idle; everyone was busy with other work. The request simply spent most of its life belonging to no one's active attention.
Why It Matters
Lean approaches to health care improvement emphasize seeing a process from the patient's side and removing waits and other waste that add no value for the patient (Mazzocato et al., 2010). From the patient's side, this MRI was mostly waiting. From each worker's side, their part was quick. That is why the delay was invisible to everyone involved: nobody experienced it except the patient and the neurologist waiting for the result. I want to spend this course mapping this workflow carefully enough to find which wait matters most.
Question for the group: Pick one request in your setting. What share of its elapsed time is actual work?
Reply to Latoya
Latoya, your pharmacy discharge example sounds similar: a prescription that takes minutes to fill but hours to reach the bedside. I wonder where the longest wait sits. In my MRI example, the longest wait was not a department's queue but information the next step needed, the safety screening, which is easy to miss if you measure each department separately.
Reply to Ben
Ben, you measured the time from lab draw to result and found it fast. I wonder whether the clock should start earlier, at the order, and end later, when someone acts on the result. Sometimes the fastest segment is measured because it is the one a department controls, while the slow segments sit between departments.
References
Mazzocato, P., Savage, C., Brommels, M., Aronsson, H., & Thor, J. (2010). Lean thinking in healthcare: A realist review of the literature. Quality and Safety in Health Care, 19(5), 376-382. https://doi.org/10.1136/qshc.2009.037986
The Chamberlain NR 543 Week 1 instructions
The opening discussion of this workflow course generally invites you to trace one piece of work through your organization and reflect on what you saw. Expect the prompt to request the process you followed, the people involved, where time went and a connection to the reading on workflow and waste. Pick something small and common, such as one order, one referral or one discharge, so you can follow it end to end. Record when it started, when it finished and how many minutes each person actually spent on it. Separate elapsed time from work time and give both numbers. Say what surprised you. Support the point with one source on flow or lean thinking in health care, formatted in APA 7. In your replies, question where a classmate started and stopped the clock.
How this NR 543 Week 1 example is built
The sample post opens with the writer's role, the hospital's size and the decision to shadow one MRI request instead of reviewing reports. A section titled for where the time went lists each contributor in turn: the provider entering the order, the radiologist assigning a protocol, the nurse completing the safety form, the technologist, the transporter and the reading radiologist, each with a small number of minutes. Added up, they reach 48 minutes against 21 hours on the clock. A short section explains why the difference matters, citing a realist review of lean in health care, and states what the writer plans to look at next. The two replies test whether a classmate's pharmacy delay and a laboratory figure measure the whole wait or only part of it.
Reading the NR 543 Week 1 grading rubric
Points in this first discussion tend to follow four things: a real process described from observation, a clear distinction between waiting and working, an accurate link to the course reading and responses that sharpen a peer's measurement. A post that gives two numbers, time elapsed and time worked, carries its analysis in a way a general complaint about delays cannot. Naming each person who touched the work shows the observation actually happened. Explaining why the gap matters to a patient lifts the post above description. Instructors also look for a reply that asks a precise question, such as where a classmate's clock began, rather than agreeing. Citations in APA 7, a professional voice and posting on schedule account for the rest of the credit on the grid.
NR 543 Week 1 help: mistakes that cost points
Many first posts describe a whole department's workflow in general terms and never follow a single item, which leaves nothing to measure. Choose one request and stay with it. Another trap is reporting only the total time, so the reader cannot tell whether the delay was slow work or long waits. Give both figures. Some writers blame a person or a department for the gap; the stronger move is to show that each step was quick and the time sat between steps. Keep the reading connection concrete by naming the idea you borrowed, such as waste or flow. In replies, avoid simple praise and ask how a classmate measured the start and end of the process. A post of four hundred to five hundred words is usually enough when every sentence carries a fact.
Get a NR 543 Week 1 example written to your instructions
Send us the assignment page, the rubric and whatever your instructor said in the announcement, and we will write a Week 1 post to your own numbers rather than a generic one. It comes back inside 24-48h and the first one costs nothing. If you already have an item in mind, tell us what it is and who was waiting.
More NR 543 papers and MSN samples
- NR 543 Week 2: Process Observation Notes
- NR 543 Week 3: Current State Map
- NR 543 Week 4: Handoff Analysis
- NR 543 Week 5: Workaround Write-up
- NR 543 Week 6: Bottleneck Brief
- NR 543 Week 7: Future State Proposal
- NR 543 Week 8: Workflow Redesign Paper
- NR 542 Week 1: Discussion on an Undefined Figure
- NR 541 Week 1: Discussion on the Informatics Role
- NR 515 Week 1: Discussion Post on Data Custody
- NR 512 Week 1: Discussion Post on One Recorded Item
NR 543 Week 1 questions, answered
Does the item have to be clinical?
Not usually. Sections commonly accept any item that moves through a care process, so a supply request, a staffing form or an equipment repair ticket can work as well as a referral. What matters is that the item has a holder at every point and a person at the end who is waiting on it.
How precise do the timings need to be in Week 1?
Rough is fine, and honest rough is better than precise invention. Most sections are looking for an order of magnitude: minutes, hours, overnight, days. Say where the estimate came from, whether that is a memory, a time stamp or somebody's guess, and the number does the work it needs to do.
Can a wait be nobody's fault?
Almost all of them are. A result held until a round, a form waiting on a signature from somebody who is in theater, an item queued behind fourteen others: these involve no failure by anyone. Posts that go looking for a culprit tend to lose points, because the course is about structure rather than conduct.
Where can I find a free NR 543 Week 1 sample paper?
The order-to-scan post with both replies appears above as the NR 543 Week 1 sample, readable in full on this page. If you followed a different request at work, send us the details and a post built on your own timings can be drafted.
What should I track for the NR 543 Week 1 discussion?
One item from start to finish, with the elapsed time and the minutes each person actually spent on it. The sample tracks an inpatient brain MRI and finds 48 minutes of work inside 21 hours.