| Course | NR 705A DNP Project & Practicum II |
|---|---|
| Week | 7 |
| Paper type | Approval determination memo |
| Length | About 810 words, 4 pages |
| Format | Memo with APA 7 citations |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 705A Week 7
Memorandum
To: Program project review committee
From: DNP student
Date: 16 February 2027
Re: Request for determination: same-day behavioral health introduction project
The Project, Described
At a single clinic site of a community health center, adults whose depression screening score on the PHQ-9 is 10 or more at a primary care visit are currently referred to behavioral health and called back days later. About a third complete a behavioral health visit within 30 days. From 1 March to 24 May 2027, the site will test a change to its usual workflow: when a score of 10 or more appears, staff alert the clinic's behavioral health consultant, who meets the patient during or after the visit, and patients not seen that day receive a call the next business day. The change was approved by the site medical director at the operations meeting on 9 February 2027 and will be carried out by site staff as part of their usual work.
Activities
The activities are those of an ordinary workflow change, carried out by the staff who already do this work. Staff carry out the changed workflow. The student prepares materials, teaches staff and reviews aggregate results. No activity is added for patients beyond what the site would do if it adopted the change without a student, and patients are not asked to take any step on the project's behalf: patients are offered the introduction and may decline, as with any referral.
Who Is Involved, and in What Capacity
Everyone involved takes part in a role they already hold. Medical assistants, clinicians, the behavioral health consultant and assistant, as staff doing their jobs. The quality analyst, producing aggregate data as part of routine quality reporting. Patients, as recipients of usual care under a changed workflow, not as research participants. The student, as an employee of the health center and a DNP student.
Data Elements, One by One
| Data element | Source | Form in which the student receives it | Identifiable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Count of eligible visits per week | Electronic record, by quality analyst | Weekly aggregate table | No |
| Count of completed behavioral health contacts within 30 days | Electronic record and referral log, by quality analyst | Weekly aggregate table | No |
| Count of same-day contacts | Electronic record | Weekly aggregate table | No |
| Count of messages in the warm handoff group | Secure messaging log, counted by the student inside the health center's system | Weekly count | No |
| Count of next-business-day calls made | Referral log, by behavioral health assistant | Weekly count | No |
| Visit length, median | Visit time stamps, by quality analyst | Weekly aggregate | No |
| Staff survey responses | Anonymous online survey, May 2027 | Aggregate by role, groups of five or more | No |
No patient identifiers, record numbers or dates of birth leave the health center's systems. Tables with cells under five are combined before release.
Is the Work Meant to Produce Knowledge Beyond This Site?
The primary purpose is to improve the site's own performance against its own quality target. The student will write the project up for the DNP program and may present it at a professional meeting, describing the site without naming it. Generalizable knowledge is not the project's purpose; it uses a standard improvement method with a site-specific aim and run charts (Langley et al., 2009). The reviewer is asked to weigh this question, which is usually the one that decides the pathway.
Request
The student requests a determination of whether the project is quality improvement not requiring further review, or research requiring review by an institutional review board, and asks for any conditions the committee wishes to attach.
Attachments
Project charter, version 1.1, 9 February 2027. Intervention design paper. Measure definition table. Staff survey draft. Site agreement, signed 9 September 2026. Each attachment uses the same terms as this memo: "same-day introduction," "completed behavioral health contact" and "eligible visit."
Risks to Patients and How They Are Handled
The committee will want to know how the design protects patients. The main risk is that a patient feels pressured to meet the consultant. The introduction is offered, not required; the medical assistant asks the patient first and records the answer, and a patient who declines receives the usual referral. A second risk, less likely but more serious, is that a patient with active suicidal thoughts is handled under the new workflow rather than the safety protocol; the design states that the existing safety protocol always takes precedence. Implementation research treats acceptability as an outcome to be measured (Proctor et al., 2011), and the staff survey will ask about it.
Contact
The student, by program email. The site mentor, who directs behavioral health at the clinic, will answer the committee's questions about the site.
Why It Matters
Integrated behavioral health depends on patients reaching care promptly (Archer et al., 2012), and the determination is the last step before the site can test whether this change helps.
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
Langley, G. J., Moen, R. D., Nolan, K. M., Nolan, T. W., Norman, C. L., & Provost, L. P. (2009). The improvement guide: A practical approach to enhancing organizational performance (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Proctor, E., Silmere, H., Raghavan, R., Hovmand, P., Aarons, G., Bunger, A., Griffey, R., & Hensley, M. (2011). Outcomes for implementation research: Conceptual distinctions, measurement challenges, and research agenda. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 38(2), 65-76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-010-0319-7
NR 705A Week 7 instructions, in plain terms
Write a short memo with no persuasion. Describe the project for a reader who knows nothing about your unit, then answer a fixed set of questions: what activities will take place, who is involved and in what capacity, what information is collected, from which source and in what form, and whether anything identifying leaves the organization. State directly whether the work is meant to produce knowledge beyond the site, since that question usually decides the pathway. Make a request rather than claiming a verdict. Describe risks to patients and how they are handled. List attachments, and make sure they use the same terms as the memo. Offer a contact for site questions.
How this NR 705A Week 7 example is built
The sample describes adults at one site whose PHQ-9 total reaches 10, the current delayed callback, the 12-week test of a same-day introduction and its approval at the operations meeting. Activities are carried out by staff in their usual roles, and patients are not asked to take any step for the project. A table lists seven data elements, all aggregate or anonymous, with small cells combined. The purpose is local improvement using run charts, with possible presentation without naming the site, and the committee is asked to weigh that. Risks of pressure and safety are addressed, and five attachments use the same terms. The memo describes how pressure on patients and safety concerns are handled. The site mentor is named as the contact for committee questions.
NR 705A Week 7 rubric: what full points look like
Determination memos lose most when they argue that the project is obviously quality improvement, which presumes the committee's decision. Next is a description written for insiders, full of unit shorthand a reviewer cannot follow. Many memos describe data in general terms rather than listing each element with its source and form. Writers often avoid the question of whether knowledge is meant to travel beyond the site, though reviewers look for it first. Risks to patients are frequently left out. Attachments that use different terms from the memo make reviewers wonder whether they describe the same project, which slows the decision. Memos that never mention patient risks also leave the committee to raise them. Contact details for site questions are often forgotten.
NR 705A Week 7 help: mistakes that cost points
Writing for a reviewer who knows nothing about your site takes deliberate plain language. With your attachments beside us, we can describe the project neutrally, list each data element with its source and form and answer whether knowledge is meant to travel. We can also help you frame a request rather than a verdict and check that attachments match the memo's terms. Asking someone outside your project to read the description first usually shows where it assumes too much. The memo is yours. Addressing risks to patients is worth doing too.
Get a NR 705A Week 7 example written to your instructions
Drop the Week 7 instructions and rubric into a request, name the pathway your organization's form asks about, and a custom NR 705A determination memo comes back inside 24-48h with the first one free. Where your site uses its own headings, send those too and the example is written under them.
More NR 705A papers and DNP samples
- NR 705A Week 1: Change Proposal Post
- NR 705A Week 2: Intervention Design
- NR 705A Week 3: Change Package Outline
- NR 705A Week 4: Baseline Description
- NR 705A Week 5: Measure Definitions
- NR 705A Week 6: Survey Instrument
- NR 705A Week 8: Design Defense Summary
- NR 702A Week 7: Practicum Objectives
NR 705A Week 7 questions, answered
Can the desk obtain the determination?
No, and the desk does not write to a review office or communicate with one on anybody's behalf. What a sample covers is the document: which questions it answers, the order they are usually answered in, and how a request for a pathway is worded so it reads as a request. The determination itself comes back to you, from your own organization.
What if my organization calls it something different?
Names vary considerably between organizations and so do the forms. The memo answers the same questions under whatever headings the local document uses, which is why the assignment is usually written to accept either. Where a site publishes its own wording, using that wording rather than a textbook term makes the memo easier for the people reading it to process.
Is this the ethics paper?
It is not. Weighing the ethics of a design is its own assignment elsewhere in the program and has its own shape. This document reports facts an office needs in order to classify the work: the activities, the information collected, the people involved, and the intent. Marks here go to accuracy and completeness rather than to reasoning about right and wrong.
Where can I find a free NR 705A Week 7 sample paper?
The finished approval determination memo for a same-day behavioral health introduction project is available here in full.
What does the NR 705A Week 7 memo say about knowledge beyond the site?
The aim is improving the site's own figure, the work may be presented without naming the site, and the committee is asked to weigh that question.