With the setting described, NR-670A turns to the sharpest piece of writing in the session: a problem stated so precisely that its improvement could be detected. A gap analysis names what performance is now, what standard it falls short of, why the shortfall happens, and what the shortfall costs in terms the organization already tracks. Everything after this stage inherits the exactness or the vagueness of these three sentences. Your section may print this as NR 670A or NR670A; 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 turns an observation into a problem a committee can act on
In a perioperative service, a nurse leader spent two mornings with a preoperative verification checklist and a stack of completed forms. She was not looking for errors in care. She was checking a narrower thing: whether each item that required a second person's confirmation actually carried one. Across 60 consecutive cases, 22 forms had at least one item verified by a single signature where the standard called for two. That audit did not become her capstone project. It became the reason her capstone had a problem statement instead of a concern.
The written work at this stage exists to make a difference measurable. A gap has two ends, and students routinely write only one of them. The current end has to come from a defined sample you can describe: how many, drawn from where, across what period, judged against what criterion. The standard end has to come from a published or organizational source you can name and date. A gap statement missing the first end is a complaint. One missing the second is an opinion about how things ought to be. Written with both, the sentence becomes a claim a quality committee could take seriously, which is exactly the register a concluding leadership experience is testing.
The other move this stage demands is causal discipline. It is not enough to report that a step fails; a graduate reader wants to know why, argued through a structured method rather than intuition. Structured cause analysis is what stops a capstone from proposing more education as the answer to every problem, which is the single most common weak ending in leadership coursework. Education addresses a knowledge cause. If your analysis shows a process cause, a design cause or an information-availability cause, then education is the wrong intervention and your following stages will be built on sand.
The practicum boundary continues to govern. Your 144 hours, the hour log, activity counts, site documentation and the mentor evaluation are your own record of work you personally did, never drafted, reconstructed or estimated with outside help. The audit or record review behind this stage is real practicum work that you conduct yourself under the permissions your site grants, and nobody else performs it or supplies you with findings. Support applies to the written argument built on top of what you found: how to phrase a problem statement so it survives scrutiny, how to structure a cause analysis, and how to report a consequence without overclaiming. Every case, incident or person referenced in your writing is de-identified first, with no names, no service dates, and no combination of details that could identify an individual.
The NR-670A Week 3 method, step by step
Six moves that convert an audited observation into an analyzed, measurable problem.
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Decide what one instance of the problem is, and write the definition down
An incomplete form, an unverified item, a transfer without a reconciled list, a visit missed without a documented reason. Fix this before anything else, because it is the unit you will count in this stage, measure in the evaluation stage, and report on in the closing paper. Changing it later invalidates all three.
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Establish current performance from a sample you can describe
State how many you reviewed, how they were selected, over what window, and how many met the criterion. Consecutive cases across a defined period is the easiest defensible selection method available to a practicum student, and saying so plainly is worth more than a larger sample chosen in a way you cannot explain.
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Name the standard the performance falls short of, with its source
An organizational policy, a professional standard or a regulatory expectation, cited with its issuing body and year. Without a named standard, your reader has only your judgment that current performance is inadequate, and a capstone rubric will not accept the writer as the standard.
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Analyze causes with a structured tool rather than intuition
Work through categories deliberately: the process design, the information available at the moment of the decision, the physical or electronic environment, the competing demands on the person, and knowledge. Report which categories the evidence supports and which it does not, because ruling something out is as analytic as ruling something in.
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Express the consequence in a unit your organization already uses
Rework, delay, additional contacts, avoidable escalations, staff minutes consumed. Attach a number to it from your own review wherever you honestly can, and where you cannot, say that the magnitude is undetermined rather than inflating it. Overstatement is more damaging to a capstone than modest, well-sourced numbers.
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Compress the statement to three sentences and stop
Current performance with its sample, the standard with its source, and the consequence. If it will not compress, the problem is still too broad, and the compression exercise has just told you something the rest of the paper cannot.
A layout and word budget for a gap analysis
The frame our tutors use for a problem and gap submission of roughly 1,200 to 1,500 words. It is our own outline rather than anything the university issues, and your section's rubric outranks it wherever the two disagree. Scale proportionally if your assigned length differs.
| Section | What belongs in it | Word target |
|---|---|---|
| The three-sentence statement | Current performance, the standard, the consequence, placed at the very top before any narrative. | 70 to 100 |
| The unit of analysis, defined | Exactly what counts as one instance, written so a second reviewer applying it would agree with you. | 110 to 150 |
| How current performance was established | Sample size, selection method, window, criterion applied, and the result as a count over that base. | 210 to 260 |
| The standard and its provenance | The policy or published expectation, its issuing body, its year, and what specifically it requires. | 150 to 190 |
| Structured cause analysis | Categories worked through in order, with the evidence supporting or excluding each, ending in the one or two you will address. | 280 to 340 |
| Consequence and what is actionable | The cost in an organizational unit, and the portion of the cause that sits inside the authority available to you. | 180 to 220 |
Evidence craft for problem definition
Write the sample and its selection into the sentence that reports the finding. That 22 of 60 consecutive cases across a stated month fell short of a named criterion is a complete evidentiary statement. Strip any one of those elements and a careful reader has to stop and ask a question, which is exactly what you are trying to prevent.
Distinguish what you counted from what you inferred. A record review tells you what the record contains, not what happened at the bedside, and saying so in one sentence demonstrates measurement literacy rather than weakening your case. Capstone graders read that distinction as maturity, and its absence as overreach.
Let the cause analysis exclude things out loud. Reporting that knowledge did not appear to be the limiting factor, and giving the observation that suggests it, is a stronger analytic move than quietly omitting the category. It is also what prevents the reflexive education intervention that weakens so many capstone plans.
Keep the consequence proportionate to the evidence. If your review supports a claim about rework and delay, claim rework and delay. Do not extend it to patient harm unless you have evidence of harm, because an inflated consequence is the fastest way to lose a reader who was otherwise persuaded.
Separate the problem from its solution completely. No sentence in this stage should name an intervention. The discipline is not stylistic; a problem written with its solution already assumed cannot be tested against evidence in the following stage, which is the entire purpose of the stage after this one.
Five mistakes that cost points in this week's territory
- A problem stated without a number. Communication is inconsistent describes a feeling; a count against a defined criterion describes a gap.
- A standard that is really the writer's preference. Should be done properly is not a standard. A named policy or published expectation with a year is.
- Cause analysis that stops at knowledge. If every root arrives at staff need more training, the analysis was not structured and the intervention is already misaimed.
- The solution smuggled into the problem statement. Naming the fix here eliminates the possibility of the following stage testing whether it is the right one.
- A consequence stretched past the evidence. Claiming harm from a documentation review costs more credibility than the stronger claim would have earned.
Before you submit
- The problem occupies three sentences at the top of the paper
- One instance of the problem is defined precisely enough for a second reviewer to apply
- Sample size, selection method and window all appear
- Whatever standard you measure against is attributed to a body and a year
- The cause analysis excludes at least one category on evidence
- No intervention is named anywhere in the document
- Nothing identifies a patient, a colleague or a dated incident
Stuck on the NR-670A problem statement?
Send the rubric and your audit notes out of Canvas. A premium original draft of the written analysis comes back in 24 to 48 hours with the gap stated so it can be measured later, and revisions run until the grade lands.