NR-528 Week 1 is where the whole session is quietly decided, because a change course starts by making you choose the thing you will change, and every later deliverable inherits that choice. The opening territory is the practice problem and its current state: what happens now, how often, and what it costs. Your section may print this as NR 528 or NR528; it is the same course. Chamberlain publishes no syllabi outside Canvas. The placement here is our teaching judgment from the course's catalog arc; your section's rubric decides what your week actually asks.
What NR-528 Week 1 asks for
A course about leading evidence-based change runs on a project spine, and the spine starts with a problem statement. The opening territory asks you to describe a real difficulty in your own practice setting with enough precision that a stranger could recognize it, measure it and care about it. That is a higher bar than it sounds. Most first drafts describe a solution wearing a problem's clothing, we need bedside report, staffing should improve, or describe the present in adjectives, inefficient, fragmented, suboptimal, that no measurement could confirm or deny.
The graded skill is the honest current state. What actually happens now, step by step, on an ordinary day? How often does the failure occur, out of how many chances, over what period? What does each occurrence cost in time, risk, rework or outcome? A current state written at that resolution makes the gap self-evident, and the gap is the problem statement. Written this way, the problem also arrives pre-scoped: if you cannot describe the current state completely, the problem is too big, and the fix is to shrink the scope until you can, one process, one unit, one measure.
Expect the week to ask for the problem's significance as well, which means connecting your local difficulty to what published work says it costs elsewhere. If your section runs a discussion this week, the classic shape is your candidate problem offered for critique, and it is worth taking the critique seriously, because classmates asking how would you measure that are doing you a favor seven weeks early. Canvas posts cannot be edited once submitted, so write the post as carefully as the paper.
The NR-528 Week 1 method, step by step
Six moves that turn a workplace complaint into a workable problem statement.
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Pull the scope signals out of your week's rubric
Rows about feasibility, measurement and significance are telling you the problem must be small, countable and consequential. Read them before choosing, because a problem chosen for passion alone tends to fail two of the three.
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List three candidate problems and interrogate each
For each: can I describe its current state from my own seat, could it produce a number, and would fixing it change something a stakeholder already cares about? Keep the one that survives all three questions, not the one you feel most.
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Write the current state as a walkthrough, not a verdict
Describe what happens now the way you would brief a new hire: the steps, the actors, the timing, the workarounds. Verdict words, broken, poor, inadequate, are placeholders for observations you have not written yet.
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Attach the honest numbers you have, and name the ones you lack
Count what you can from your own vantage: occurrences in a shift, minutes lost per event, calls made to fix one instance. Where no number exists, say so plainly and note that establishing the count is early project work, which is itself a scored insight.
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Price the problem in consequences
Time, safety risk, rework, delay, experience: pick the two costs that matter most in your setting and state who pays each. A problem priced in consequences earns its significance section instead of asserting it.
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Compress to a two-sentence problem statement
Sentence one: the current state with its number or its named missing number. Sentence two: the gap between that state and what standard, evidence or policy expects. If a solution appears in either sentence, start again.
A layout and word budget for a current state assessment
This is the frame our tutors keep beside opening project work, sized for roughly 1,000 to 1,300 words. It is a tutor's scaffold rather than anything the university issues, and your week's rubric outranks it wherever the two disagree. Scale the targets proportionally if your assigned length differs.
| Section | What belongs in it | Word target |
|---|---|---|
| The setting and your vantage | The unit or clinic, your role in it, and what you can and cannot see from that seat, stated honestly. | 110 to 140 |
| The current state, walked through | What happens now, step by step, with actors, timing and the workarounds people have built. | 260 to 320 |
| The numbers, honest ones | Counts you can support with their base and window, and the measurements that do not yet exist, named as gaps. | 160 to 200 |
| The costs and who pays | Two consequences that matter in your setting, each tied to the people or outcomes that absorb them. | 150 to 190 |
| Significance from the literature | What published work says this class of problem costs elsewhere, with settings and designs attached. | 180 to 220 |
| The problem statement | Two sentences: the measured or measurable current state, and the gap against an expectation you can cite. | 60 to 90 |
Evidence craft for problem and baseline writing
Local numbers need their collection story. A count you made yourself is evidence when the sentence says how it was made: observed over how many shifts, from which records, counting what as an occurrence. The same number without its story is an impression wearing digits.
National figures frame the problem; they do not measure yours. Published rates establish that your class of problem matters, and your significance section should use them that way, with settings attached. The moment a national rate stands in for your unit's baseline, the project has borrowed a number it will be asked to repay in week seven.
Definitions decide counts, so state yours before counting. What counts as a delayed discharge, a missed dose, an incomplete handoff? Two reasonable people can count the same week differently, and the difference is the definition. Fix the definition in a sentence, then count, and the number becomes defensible.
Benchmarks and standards carry dates and issuers. The expectation half of a problem statement leans on a guideline, a standard or a policy, and each has an issuing body and a year that belong in the sentence. An uncited expectation is an opinion, and the gap it defines inherits the weakness.
Five mistakes that cost points in this week's territory
- The solution in disguise. We need a standardized huddle is a plan, not a problem. Strip the remedy out and describe what its absence currently costs, or week three will have nothing to select a fix for.
- A problem the size of the organization. Culture, morale and staffing as whole entities cannot be baselined by one student in eight weeks. One process on one unit can, and the guide's feasibility language is telling you which it wants.
- Adjectives where numbers belong. Inefficient, fragmented and suboptimal cannot anchor a before-and-after comparison. A count, a duration or a rate with its base can.
- Inventing a baseline. A confident number with no collection story is worse than a stated absence, because week seven will measure against it. Write what you know, what you do not, and how you would find out.
- Skipping who pays. A problem no stakeholder feels is a problem no stakeholder will help fix, and the engagement weeks ahead will inherit the apathy. Name the cost bearers now.
Before you submit
- The current state reads as a walkthrough a stranger could follow
- Every number carries its base, window and collection story
- Missing measurements are named as gaps, not papered over
- Significance cites published work with settings attached
- The problem statement contains no solution in either sentence
- The scope is one process, one setting, one measurable outcome
Starting NR-528 this session?
Send the instructions and the rubric out of Canvas. A premium original draft comes back in 24 to 48 hours with a problem scoped to survive all eight weeks, and revisions run until the grade lands.