The second stage of an information workflow course is where you stop describing and start drawing. NR-543 Week 2 asks for a current-state map: the actual sequence of steps, decisions, handoffs and waits that move information through the workflow you scoped, documented as it happens rather than as policy says it should. The written layer around the diagram is what carries the grade, because the map shows the path and the prose has to say what the path costs. Your section may print this as NR 543 or NR543; 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-543 Week 2 asks for
Current-state mapping has one rule that decides whether the piece works: you document the workflow that exists, not the workflow that is supposed to exist. A telehealth intake protocol may say the remote blood pressure reading posts to the record automatically. If the nurse in practice screenshots the reading and types the number into a note because the automatic post lands in a section the prescriber does not open, then the screenshot and the retyping are steps in your map. Policy is a separate document. The gap between the two is often the finding.
The conventions you are being taught here come from process analysis rather than from nursing. A swim lane diagram puts each actor or system in its own horizontal band so that every crossing of a lane boundary is visibly a handoff. A basic flowchart distinguishes activity boxes from decision diamonds, so that every point where someone must choose is exposed rather than buried in a description. A data flow view tracks the information itself, showing where it is created, stored, transformed and consumed. Sections differ in which they ask for, and rubrics differ in whether the diagram is submitted as an image, an appendix, or a described sequence in the text.
Whichever convention your section uses, the writing job is constant. A map that a reader has to interpret unaided does not earn analysis points. The prose must walk the reader through the sequence in order, name each handoff, mark the steps that add no value to the terminal decision, and identify where information waits. Waiting is the most underwritten element in student maps. On a med-surg unit, a value that exists at 07:10 and is not seen by the person who acts on it until 11:40 has failed even though no step in the chain failed.
Expect the deliverable to be a diagram plus a narrative, or a narrative that describes the sequence step by step if your section does not take images. If a discussion accompanies it, the useful post is the one that names a single surprising step you found rather than summarizing the whole map, and it should be written as final copy because posts do not reopen after submission in Canvas.
The NR-543 Week 2 method, step by step
Six moves for producing a current-state map that survives a grader's reading.
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1. Re-read your Week 1 boundary before you draw anything
The trigger and stop point you committed to are the edges of the page. Any step outside them belongs in a sentence about context, not in the map. Maps grow without this discipline and an oversized map cannot be analyzed inside a word limit.
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2. Walk the sequence in real time, once, without correcting it
Follow the information as it actually moves and write each step in the order it occurs, including the ones that should not be there. Resist the urge to tidy while observing. Cleaning happens in the drawing, and steps deleted in the notebook never reappear.
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3. Separate activities from decisions and mark every lane crossing
Redraw with actors and systems in their own lanes. Each time the sequence crosses a lane boundary, label it as a handoff and note what carries the information across: an interface, a phone call, a printed sheet, a verbal report.
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4. Time the steps that can be timed
Elapsed time between capture and use is the most persuasive number a current-state map can carry. Where you cannot measure, give a defensible range and say how you arrived at it. Do not present an estimate in the same font as a measurement.
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5. Classify each step against the terminal decision
Three categories: the step moves the information toward the decision, the step is required by rule or safety without moving it, or the step exists only because of a system limitation. That third pile is your analysis, and it is where the redesign will start.
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6. Write the narrative in the map's own order
Paragraph one is the trigger, the last paragraph is the stop point, and the paragraphs between follow the sequence without jumping. A narrative that wanders out of order forces the grader to rebuild the map from prose, which is exactly the work the map was supposed to save.
A layout and word budget for a current-state analysis
Our frame for a mapping submission with an accompanying narrative, sized for roughly 1,000 to 1,300 words of prose plus the diagram. It is our outline rather than anything the university issues, and your week's rubric outranks it wherever they disagree.
| Section | What belongs in it | Word target |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation to the map | The convention used, what a lane represents, what a box and a diamond mean, and where the reader should start. | 90 to 120 |
| The sequence, in order | Each step named with its actor and system, following the diagram from trigger to stop point without reordering. | 300 to 380 |
| Handoff inventory | Every lane crossing, what carries the information across it, and what is lost or added in the crossing. | 200 to 250 |
| Delay and rework | Where information waits, where it is entered more than once, and the elapsed times you can defend. | 180 to 230 |
| Workarounds observed | The unofficial steps staff have built, described neutrally as adaptations to a design rather than as errors. | 140 to 180 |
| What the map reveals | Two or three findings the diagram makes visible that the Week 1 description could not, stated as claims. | 120 to 160 |
Evidence craft for current-state documentation
Attribute your mapping convention. Swim lanes, flowcharting symbols and data flow notation come from published process analysis traditions, and naming the source of the convention you used lets a grader check your symbols against a standard instead of guessing at them.
Separate what you observed from what you were told. Write observed on three day shifts in one clause and reported by the charge nurse in another. The distinction is the difference between a documented current state and a described one, and rubrics that mention rigor are watching for it.
Give every duration a method. Measured on six consecutive encounters carries weight. Roughly an hour carries none. If your access to timestamps is limited, say so plainly and use a range; an honest range with a stated basis is stronger than a precise number a reader cannot trace.
Keep workaround language neutral. Staff who invent shortcuts are responding rationally to a design that costs them time. Write the adaptation and the pressure that produced it. Language that reads as accusation is both inaccurate and, in graduate informatics writing, directly penalized.
Ground the analysis in workflow literature, not only in your notes. Interruption, documentation burden, duplicate entry and information latency are all studied phenomena with published measurement approaches, and one well-chosen source lets you say that what you observed is a known pattern rather than a local oddity.
Five mistakes that cost points in this week's territory
- Mapping the policy instead of the practice. A map that matches the procedure manual exactly usually means the observation did not happen, and graders in this course know it.
- A diagram with no narrative. The image is evidence; the analysis is prose. A submission that leans on the picture forfeits the rows that ask you to interpret it.
- Decisions drawn as activities. If a step has two possible outputs, it is a decision point, and flattening it hides the branch where the workflow actually fails.
- No time anywhere on the map. Latency is the currency of information workflow, and a map without a single duration cannot support a claim that anything is slow.
- Proposing fixes inside the current state. Solutions belong in later stages. Interleaving them here muddies the baseline that the closing weeks will measure improvement against.
Before you submit
- The map begins at the Week 1 trigger and ends at the Week 1 stop point
- Every actor and every system has its own lane or an explicit label
- Each handoff names the medium that carries the information across
- Decision points are drawn as decisions with their branches shown
- At least one defensible duration appears, with the method that produced it
- Observed and reported steps are distinguished in the narrative
- No proposed solution appears anywhere in the current-state description
Mapping a workflow for NR-543?
Send the rubric and your observation notes out of Canvas. A premium original draft comes back in 24 to 48 hours with the narrative walking the map in order and every handoff named, and revisions run until the grade lands.