| Course | NR 714 Application of Analytic Methods II |
|---|---|
| Week | 1 |
| Paper type | Discussion post with two replies |
| Length | About 640 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 714 Week 1
Week 1 Discussion: Initial Post
Peripheral IV Catheters That Fail Before the Therapy Ends: What Our Medicine Unit Records and What It Cannot Tell Me
Initial Post
Setting, group and change. I work on 4 North, a 36-bed adult medicine unit at a community hospital that trains residents. The patients I want to count are adults with a peripheral IV catheter in place while they are on our unit, which is most of them. The change I want to test is a securement bundle for every new peripheral catheter: tissue adhesive at the insertion site, a bordered polyurethane dressing and a securement device on the hub, with the site checked and scored once a shift.
The question as a number. Of the peripheral catheters that dwell on our unit, how many fail before the therapy they were placed for is finished, expressed per 1,000 catheter-days? Failure here means removal for infiltration, occlusion, dislodgement, phlebitis or leaking, not removal because the therapy ended. In the six months from January to June 2026 the unit had 1,412 catheters, 4,236 catheter-days and 437 failures: 103.2 per 1,000 catheter-days, or 30.9% of catheters. About a third of peripheral catheters failing is in line with what large adult cohorts have reported (Marsh et al., 2018), which tells me the problem is common, not that our figure is right.
Where the number lives. Every catheter is a lines, drains and airways entry in our electronic record, with an insertion date and time, a site, a gauge, a removal date and time and a removal reason chosen from a picklist. Catheter-days come from the two timestamps. The unit's data analyst can pull the entries monthly, and I have checked one month by hand against the nursing notes.
What the data cannot settle. Three things are not in any field. First, the picklist records what the nurse saw, not what caused it: "dislodged" covers a catheter pulled by a confused patient and one that slid out under a loose dressing, and only the second is something a securement bundle should change. Second, catheters placed in the emergency department often arrive with no insertion time, so their dwell before reaching us is unknown. Third, the removal reason is a judgment. Two nurses looking at the same swollen site might choose infiltration and phlebitis respectively, so the split between reasons is softer than the total. Catheter failure has long been treated as a routine part of inpatient care (Helm et al., 2015), which may be why nobody on our unit has ever audited the reason field. I would rather say now that the bundle can be tested on total failures and on dislodgement as a group, and not on the cause of any single removal.
My question for the group: has anyone tested a change against a picklist field and found, partway through, that nurses had started choosing different reasons once they knew the field was being watched? I would like to know how you checked for it.
Reply to Renee
Renee, you wrote that rapid response calls on your telemetry floor are "frequent". Out of how many patients, over what period? If it is 40 calls in a quarter on a 28-bed unit, that is roughly 16 per 1,000 patient-days at a typical census, and a change that removed four calls would be hard to tell apart from an ordinary quarter. I would also ask which of your fields records whether a call was needed, because I suspect none does.
Reply to Marcus
Marcus, your discharge teaching question depends on whether patients took their medicines at home, and your record holds only whether the teaching was documented. Could you count something the system does store, such as pharmacy fills within seven days, and say plainly that a fill is not the same as taking the drug?
References
Helm, R. E., Klausner, J. D., Klemperer, J. D., Flint, L. M., & Huang, E. (2015). Accepted but unacceptable: Peripheral IV catheter failure. Journal of Infusion Nursing, 38(3), 189-203. https://doi.org/10.1097/NAN.0000000000000100
Marsh, N., Webster, J., Larsen, E., Cooke, M., Mihala, G., & Rickard, C. M. (2018). Observational study of peripheral intravenous catheter outcomes in adult hospitalized patients: A multivariable analysis of peripheral intravenous catheter failure. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 13(2), 83-89. https://doi.org/10.12788/jhm.2867
What the NR 714 Week 1 assignment asks for
Within the first few lines, name the setting by type, the patient group you would count and the change you want to test. Then turn to measurement. Say what the unit already records that bears on the question, in which system, at what interval and who can extract it, because a question no field answers becomes a collection project before it becomes an analysis. Put a denominator and a period under any problem you describe; a word like frequent is not a figure. The part of the post that marks it as doctoral work is a short, plain statement of what the available data cannot settle, such as intent, cause or judgment that no record stores. Finish by putting a question to the group that draws on their own units. When replying, give a classmate's claim a denominator or point them to a field their system does store.
Inside the NR 714 Week 1 example
The opening paragraph names a 36-bed adult medicine unit, adults with a peripheral catheter while on that unit and a three-part securement bundle with a shift check. The next paragraph turns the problem into a rate: 103.2 failures per 1,000 catheter-days, 30.9% of catheters, set against a large adult cohort only to show the problem is common. The source paragraph names the device entry fields, the monthly pull by the data analyst and a month already checked by hand. The writer then lists three limits: dislodgement does not record cause, emergency department catheters arrive without insertion times and two nurses may choose different reasons for the same site. The question to the group asks about nurses changing their picklist choices once watched. Replies give one classmate a rate per 1,000 patient-days and steer another toward pharmacy fills.
Reading the NR 714 Week 1 grading rubric
The heaviest loss in this first post is a problem with no denominator anywhere near it. A writer who calls something common without saying out of how many, or over how long, gives classmates nothing to weigh. Next is a question no record could answer, usually because it depends on intent or judgment rather than on a stored value. Points also go when the setting is so vague that nobody can picture who is counted, when a measure is named but never defined, and when published rates are quoted in place of the unit's own baseline. Graders reward a post that admits what its data cannot settle before anyone asks, and responses that change a classmate's work by adding a figure or a field rather than agreeing with it.
Common NR 714 Week 1 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Many DNP students know the problem they want to fix but have never looked at how their record stores it. If you tell us your setting, your patient group and the change you are considering, we can help you find the field that holds the number, work out a denominator and write the paragraph on what the data cannot settle. We can also help you draft replies that add something to a classmate's post. The question, the setting and the figures are yours; the post simply shows them clearly.
Get a NR 714 Week 1 example written to your instructions
Send the instructions your classroom published, the rubric if you have one, and a line or two about the unit and the question you are working on. We write a fresh example to those details and return it inside 24 to 48 hours. The first one costs nothing, and nothing in it is reused from another writer.
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NR 714 Week 1 questions, answered
How is this different from the statistics course before it?
The earlier course teaches procedures on data somebody else prepared. This one starts from a practice question the writer owns and asks whether their own setting can produce numbers to answer it. That shifts the difficulty from arithmetic toward measurement and access, which is why the Week 1 post spends most of its length on where the data lives rather than on which test will run.
Does a Week 1 post need citations?
Most sections expect support at this level, and the useful place for it is the measure rather than the anecdote. A source that defines the outcome, or reports what the figure runs at elsewhere, gives a reader something to hold the writer's baseline against. Citing a general statement about quality improvement adds a reference without adding evidence, and instructors notice the difference quickly.
Can the sample be about a setting I do not work in?
Yes. The example is built on a described setting, so tell us the unit type, its approximate size, the patient group and the change under test, and the post is written to that. Your own practice hours, project logbook and anything a site mentor signs stay with you, since those records are yours to keep and never ours to draft.
Where can I find a free NR 714 Week 1 sample paper?
A complete Week 1 post on peripheral IV catheter failure on a medicine unit, with two replies to classmates, is available on this page.
What does the NR 714 Week 1 sample say its data cannot show?
Why a catheter was dislodged, how long emergency department catheters had been in before arrival and whether two nurses would pick the same removal reason.