Before a practice change can be specified it has to be located, and locating it means writing down the process as it currently runs rather than as policy says it runs. The written work at this stage is a current-state process description built from observation, with the failure points identified and characterized: which step fails, how often, in which direction, and whether the failure is one of knowledge, of workflow, of information or of accountability. That last classification determines what kind of change can fix it, which is why this section decides more about the project than any other. Your section may print this as NR 705A or NR705A; 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-705A Week 5 asks for
Written policy at one long-term care campus described the return from hospital in six steps. Observation across several afternoons found eleven, four of which existed only because the ambulance service arrived before the receiving unit had been notified. The four extra steps were not in any document and were entirely predictable to anyone who had worked an admission at four in the afternoon. This is the ordinary condition of processes in health care: the documented version is the intended one, and the real one has grown around a constraint nobody wrote down. A project designed against the documented version aims at a process that does not exist.
So this stage is about writing what you saw. Actors, sequence, handoffs, decision points, waits and rework, described so that someone outside the building could follow a resident through the process from end to end. Doctoral readers assess this section on whether it reads as observed. Specific detail carries that signal: which role performs a step, what triggers it, what has to be present for it to proceed, and what happens when the person who normally does it is covering two units instead of one.
Deliverables here usually sit inside project documentation as a current-state analysis, often with a process map or flow diagram and sometimes a gap analysis comparing current practice against the evidence-based standard you established earlier. Where a discussion accompanies the stage, apply the same discipline, since posts do not reopen once submitted in Canvas.
The analytic payoff is the failure classification. A step that fails because staff do not know it should happen calls for a different intervention than a step that fails because the information needed to complete it has not arrived yet, and both differ from a step that fails because nobody in particular owns it. Knowledge failures respond to education. Information failures respond to changes in what travels and when. Ownership failures respond to assignment and accountability. Workflow failures respond to changing where in the sequence the step sits. Naming which of these you are facing is the single most consequential sentence in the section, and it is the one most often left unwritten.
The placement boundary, stated plainly
This section can only be written from observation you personally performed. The 128 clinical hours, the hour log, activity and encounter records, mentor and preceptor evaluations, site agreements and any signature the facility or university verifies are your own record and are never drafted, reconstructed, estimated or completed with anyone's assistance. No one can observe a process for you, and no legitimate help would offer to. What can be taught is the written layer: how to structure a current-state description, how to characterize a failure point precisely, how to compare observed practice against a standard without editorializing, and how to build a process map a committee can follow. When you write about real admissions, real transfers or real staff, de-identify the writing completely and remove every identifier. Refer to roles rather than named individuals, strip dates of service and unit designations, and include no resident detail beyond what an aggregate figure requires.
The NR-705A Week 5 method, step by step
Six moves for writing a current-state analysis that a change can be designed against.
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Reduce the rubric rows to verbs and check whether a figure is expected
Map, analyze and compare are different tasks, and some project documentation requires a formal diagram with defined conventions. Establish that before drawing, because reworking a map is slower than building the right one.
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Set the boundaries of the process before describing it
Where does the process start and where does it end. An unbounded description sprawls and cannot be compared to anything, while a process bounded at the point a decision is made and at the point the resident is settled can be measured end to end.
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Write the sequence by actor, not by department
Each step gets a role, a trigger, a required input and an output. Departments do not perform steps; people in roles do, and a map written at department altitude cannot show where a handoff drops something.
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Mark waits, rework and workarounds explicitly
These are where the real information lives. A workaround is a signal that the designed process does not fit the conditions, and describing one accurately is often more valuable than the rest of the map combined.
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Compare each step against the evidence-based standard
Set the observed step beside what the guidance you appraised earlier says should happen. The gap between them, step by step, is your gap analysis, and it should be visible without the reader having to reconstruct it.
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Classify each failure by type before proposing anything
Knowledge, information, ownership or workflow. Write the classification explicitly, because it determines which category of intervention can work, and a project that skips it usually defaults to education regardless of what the failure actually is.
A layout and word budget for a current-state and gap analysis
Our frame for a process analysis section, sized for roughly 1,400 to 1,700 words plus the map. It is our own outline rather than anything the university issues, and your chair's guidance and your week's rubric outrank it wherever they disagree.
| Section | What belongs in it | Word target |
|---|---|---|
| Process boundaries and method | Start point, end point, how many observation occasions, on which shifts, and what documents were reviewed alongside. | 170 to 210 |
| Current state, step by step | Each step with its role, trigger, required input and output, written so an outsider could follow the sequence. | 350 to 430 |
| Waits, rework and workarounds | Where the process stalls, doubles back or is routinely bypassed, and what condition each workaround compensates for. | 220 to 270 |
| Gap against the standard | Observed practice set beside the appraised guidance, step by step, with the size of each gap where it can be counted. | 250 to 310 |
| Failure classification | Each failure point typed as knowledge, information, ownership or workflow, with the reasoning behind the classification. | 240 to 290 |
| Implications for design | What the classification rules in and rules out as an intervention, stated before any specific change is proposed. | 170 to 210 |
Evidence craft for process analysis writing
State how the process was observed and how often. Four afternoon admissions across three weeks is a method a reader can weigh. Observation of the process is not. Method transparency in a current-state section serves the same purpose that sampling detail serves in a study.
Separate what you saw from what the document says and from what you were told. All three belong and they carry different weight. Where the written policy and the observed practice diverge, that divergence is a finding and should be reported as one rather than smoothed over.
Count what can be counted. How many of the observed occasions included the step, how long a wait ran, how many handoffs the information passed through. Even small counts, clearly bounded and labelled as observations rather than as a formal audit, strengthen the section considerably.
Describe workarounds without judgment. Staff who bypass a designed step are almost always solving a real problem the design created. Write the workaround, then write the condition that produced it. A section that reads as fault-finding will not be useful to the site and will not read as doctoral analysis either.
Five mistakes that cost points in this week's territory
- Mapping the policy instead of the practice. The documented process is the intended one, and designing a change against it aims at something that does not happen.
- Steps without owners. A map whose steps belong to departments cannot show where a handoff fails, which is usually the whole point of drawing it.
- Workarounds omitted or condemned. Leaving them out hides the most informative part of the process; condemning them misreads what they are telling you.
- Gap analysis without the standard. Comparing current practice to a general sense of best practice produces an unverifiable gap; the appraised guidance has to be present.
- Failure type unclassified. Without it, almost every project defaults to staff education, including the majority whose failures education cannot fix.
Before you submit
- The process has stated start and end boundaries
- Observation method, occasions and shifts are described
- Every step names a role, a trigger and a required input
- Waits, rework and workarounds appear with the conditions that produce them
- Each failure point is classified by type with reasoning
- Observed, documented and reported information are attributed separately
Writing the NR-705A current-state analysis?
Send the rubric, your notes and your appraised guidance out of Canvas. A premium original draft comes back in 24 to 48 hours with the sequence written by actor, the workarounds explained, and every failure point classified. Revisions run until the grade lands, and your hours, logs and site documentation stay entirely yours.