| Course | NR 702A DNP Project & Practicum I |
|---|---|
| Week | 1 |
| Paper type | Discussion post with two replies |
| Length | About 510 words |
| Format | Discussion post with APA 7 citations |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 702A Week 1
Week 1 Discussion: Initial Post
Positive Depression Screens That Never Reach Behavioral Health: A Trouble I Can See From the Exam Room and the Report That Would Confirm or Kill It
Initial Post
The service: adult primary care at one site of a federally qualified health center; my job there is family nurse practitioner. Nine primary care clinicians, one full-time behavioral health consultant and a half-time psychologist two days a week. About 1,100 adult visits a month; a large share of patients prefer Spanish.
The trouble: adults whose depression screen comes back positive at a visit, scoring 10 or higher on the PHQ-9, a validated nine-item measure (Kroenke et al., 2001), are referred to behavioral health and many never get there.
What I have seen myself. In the past month I had five patients with a PHQ-9 of 10 or more. I placed a referral for each. When I checked three weeks later, one had seen the behavioral health consultant. Two had not been reached by phone. One had been reached and booked, then missed the appointment. One was still waiting for a call back. The consultant's schedule is full most afternoons, so referrals go into a queue and are called back over the following days.
What the organization already produces that would confirm or kill the impression: the health center's quality dashboard reports depression screening and follow-up planning each quarter, and the behavioral health team keeps a referral log with the date of each completed visit. Matching the two would show how many positive screens become a completed behavioral health contact within 30 days. If that share is high, my five patients were unlucky and there is no project.
Why it fits four terms and one person. The trouble sits at one handoff, from primary care visit to first behavioral health contact, at one site. It is big enough to need a baseline, a change, a test and an evaluation across four terms. It is small enough that one person can finish it without redesigning the health center's behavioral health service. Collaborative care models that integrate behavioral health into primary care improve depression outcomes (Archer et al., 2012), but they depend on the first contact actually happening.
Who could turn it down. The chief medical officer, who signs practicum agreements; the director of behavioral health, who controls the consultant's schedule; and the quality committee, which owns the dashboard.
The open question, and the first thing I will ask about. Nobody has yet told me whether matching the dashboard to the referral log is possible, since the two sit in different parts of the record.
Reply to Alicia
Alicia, you saw three falls on your unit in one week. What report would show whether that week was unusual? If the monthly fall rate has been flat for a year, the project might be about something else.
Reply to Devon
Devon, your trouble, missed insulin doses at a skilled nursing facility, sounds real. Who could turn the project down? If it's the facility's administrator, have you asked yet?
References
Archer, J., Bower, P., Gilbody, S., Lovell, K., Richards, D., Gask, L., Dickens, C., & Coventry, P. (2012). Collaborative care for depression and anxiety problems. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2012(10), CD006525. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006525.pub2
Kroenke, K., Spitzer, R. L., & Williams, J. B. W. (2001). The PHQ-9: Validity of a brief depression severity measure. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 16(9), 606-613. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1525-1497.2001.016009606.x
NR 702A Week 1 instructions, in plain terms
Describe one service and one trouble inside it, in the present tense, as somebody who works there. Make the kind of unit clear and leave the employer unnamed. Report in two or three sentences what you have seen with your own eyes, then name what the organization already produces that would either confirm your impression or kill it, since a DNP project needs data the site already holds. Argue briefly that the trouble is big enough to carry four terms and small enough for one person to finish. Say who could turn the project down. Admit what nobody has told you yet. In replies, ask classmates for the report that would test their impression and for who holds the power to refuse.
Inside the NR 702A Week 1 example
The sample describes a site with nine primary care clinicians, one behavioral health consultant and a part-time psychologist, about 1,100 adult visits a month and many Spanish-speaking patients. The writer saw five patients with PHQ-9 scores of 10 or more referred in a month, of whom one reached behavioral health in three weeks. The quality dashboard and the behavioral health referral log are named as the data that would confirm or refute the pattern. The trouble is placed at one handoff at one site, supported by collaborative care evidence. The chief medical officer, the director of behavioral health and the quality committee are named as people who could refuse, and the untested data match is admitted. The post also explains why collaborative care evidence supports focusing on the first contact.
NR 702A Week 1 rubric: what full points look like
First DNP posts lose most when the trouble is stated at the scale of a population, such as depression in the community, rather than a trouble at one handoff in one service. Next is an impression with no named report that could test it, which leaves the project resting on anecdote. Many posts name the organization, which raises confidentiality issues. Writers often claim a trouble is important without arguing that it fits four terms and one person. Posts that never say who could refuse the project skip the first practical question. Replies that agree a classmate's topic matters, rather than asking for the report or the person who could say no, add little to the discussion. Posts that skip what the writer has personally seen also lose the evidence that makes a trouble credible.
NR 702A Week 1 help: mistakes that cost points
Choosing a DNP project trouble that is both real and finishable is the most important decision of the first term. In a short guided draft, we can describe your service and trouble, report what you have seen and name the data that would test your impression. We can also help you argue the scale for four terms and name who could refuse. Asking the person who keeps the data whether a match is possible, before you post, often saves a term. The trouble and the setting are yours.
Get a NR 702A Week 1 example written to your instructions
Send the discussion instructions from your own classroom, along with the service you work in and whatever you have noticed there, and a Week 1 post is written to those specifics rather than to a generic unit. It comes back inside 24 to 48 hours, and the first one is free.
More NR 702A papers and DNP samples
- NR 702A Week 2: Practice Gap Write-up
- NR 702A Week 3: Setting Description Paper
- NR 702A Week 4: Site Agreement Summary
- NR 702A Week 5: Aim Statement Draft
- NR 702A Week 6: Project Charter Draft
- NR 702A Week 7: Practicum Objective Set
- NR 702A Week 8: Proposal Readiness Memo
NR 702A Week 1 questions, answered
Can I name my hospital in the post?
Most sections would rather you did not, and the writing is stronger without it. Identify the workplace by the kind of service it is, its rough size, and the population it serves, which tells a reader everything the argument needs. The organization's name adds nothing to the reasoning and puts an employer into a document that other people read.
I have not seen a number yet. Is the post still writable?
Yes, and Week 1 is the week where that is allowed. What the post owes is not a figure but a route to one: something the organization prints for its own reasons, a form that gets filled in whether or not anybody reads it, or a tally you could start on Monday. A trouble with no route to a number is the thing to change, and Week 2 asks for the number itself.
Does the problem I post in Week 1 have to be the one I keep?
No, and a good number of projects change subject between the first post and the charter. What tends to survive is not the topic but the access: writers keep the problem they can reach and drop the one they cannot. If your Week 1 post has already been sent back once, the usual repair is to move to a service you work in rather than to reword the same trouble.
Where can I find a free NR 702A Week 1 sample paper?
The complete post on positive depression screens that never reach behavioral health, with replies to Alicia and Devon, is on this page.
What data does the NR 702A Week 1 post name to test its impression?
The health center's quarterly quality dashboard and the behavioral health referral log, matched to show completed contacts within 30 days.