NR 714 Week 7 Evaluation Plan Example

Evaluation Plan for the Peripheral IV Securement Bundle on 4 North, April 2027 to March 2028

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 714: Application of Analytic Methods II

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Evaluation Plan for the Peripheral IV Securement Bundle on 4 North, April 2027 to March 2028

What This Plan Is For

The securement bundle on 4 North was followed by a fall in premature catheter failure from 103.2 to 78.1 per 1,000 catheter-days over six months. This plan sets out how the unit will evaluate the bundle for the next twelve months, April 2027 to March 2028, after the project lead's involvement ends. It is written so that the unit could run it without the person who wrote it: every measure has a definition, a source, a schedule, an owner and a stated cost in staff minutes (Langley et al., 2009).

Outcome, Process and Balancing Together

Table 1

Evaluation Measures for the Securement Bundle, 4 North, April 2027 to March 2028

Note. Note. Total about 250 staff minutes a month, roughly four hours. The review line counts three people for 20 minutes.

The outcome alone could not tell the unit why a result moved. If failures rise next winter, the process measures show whether the bundle was still being applied; a rise with the bundle in place is a different problem from a rise without it. The skin injury count watches for the one side effect that appeared in the first six months, when injuries rose from 2 to 7, all in patients over 80.

Effort Stated in Minutes

The plan costs about four hours of staff time a month, most of it the weekly bedside audit: ten catheters at about three minutes each. The audit was cut from 25 catheters a week during the project to 10, because ten a week, about 43 a month, is enough to see whether completion stays above 80% while costing a charge nurse half an hour. Any plan that needed more would be dropped the first busy month, and a plan that stops is worse than a smaller one that runs.

Analysis, Matching the Earlier Plan

The outcome continues on the same u-chart, keeping the January to August 2026 center line and limits unchanged until the shift rule is met. Once eight consecutive months fall below the baseline center line, new limits will be calculated from the post-bundle months and used from then on. Each quarter, the rate ratio against the baseline will be reported with its 95% confidence interval, computed exactly as in the analysis plan (Provost & Murray, 2022). The process and balancing measures will be shown as simple monthly counts and percentages.

The Decision Rules, Fixed Now

These rules were agreed by the practice council on 2 April 2027 and will not be changed during the year.

If any month's failure rate rises above the baseline upper control limit, or two consecutive months rise above the post-bundle center line once it exists, the council reviews the month within two weeks, beginning with the process measures.

If bundle completion falls below 70% in any month, the unit educator runs a ten-minute refresher at each shift huddle the following week, regardless of the outcome figure.

If three or more adhesive-related skin injuries are reported in one month, tissue adhesive is paused for patients over 80 until the wound care nurse has reviewed each case and advised.

If, at the end of the year, the rate ratio's confidence interval includes 1.0, the council will report that the reduction has not held and decide whether to keep the bundle on cost grounds alone.

What Else Changed That Quarter

Comparing one unit with itself across time leaves the result open to anything else that happened in those months, and four things did (Portela et al., 2015). First, in October 2026 the hospital replaced its infusion pumps with a model whose occlusion alarm is more sensitive, which could have changed how quickly nurses noticed occlusions. Second, in November 2026 the vascular access team began day-shift coverage for patients with difficult access, using ultrasound guidance, which might produce sturdier placements on every unit. Third, nine newly graduated nurses joined 4 North in September 2026, the same month the bundle began. Fourth, December and January brought the usual influenza-season census surge.

To separate the bundle from the hospital-wide changes, the evaluation adds one comparison. 5 North, a 32-bed medicine unit that did not adopt the bundle, has the same pumps and the same vascular access team. Across the same six months its rate went from 99.4 to 95.1 failures per 1,000 catheter-days, a ratio of 0.96. A hospital-wide cause would have moved both units; a fall concentrated on 4 North points toward the bundle. 5 North's rate will be pulled each month from the same report, at no extra cost in minutes beyond the analyst's run.

How Long the Baseline Is, and Why It Is Kept

The baseline stretch is eight months, January to August 2026, when monthly figures ranged from 96.0 to 111.6 without any intervention. That spread is the reference for every later month, and it will not be recalculated because a later month looks unusual. 5 North's baseline covers the same eight months and moved within a similar band. Keeping the original limits fixed until the shift rule is met protects the plan from the most common way a sustained gain is misread: adjusting the comparison until the latest month looks ordinary.

Who Watches It Afterward

From April 2027, the practice council chair owns this plan. The data analyst runs the reports, the charge nurses run the audits, and the nurse manager reports the year's results to the nursing quality committee in April 2028. The project lead will attend the first two monthly reviews to hand over and then step back.

References

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.

Portela, M. C., Pronovost, P. J., Woodcock, T., Carter, P., & Dixon-Woods, M. (2015). How to study improvement interventions: A brief overview of possible study types. BMJ Quality & Safety, 24(5), 325-336. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2014-003620

Provost, L. P., & Murray, S. K. (2022). The health care data guide: Learning from data for improvement (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.