The second stage of an informatics course usually moves from naming a problem to documenting how the work is actually done, which means writing a current-state workflow that includes the workarounds. The policy version of a process is easy to obtain and worth almost nothing analytically. The lived version, with its double entry, its sticky notes and its verbal handoffs, is what a system change has to survive. Your section may print this as NR 706 or NR706; 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-706 Week 2 asks for
Here is the documentation scene that separates a real workflow map from a copied one. A nurse finishes a wound assessment, opens the flowsheet, and finds that the measurement fields require three entries she does not have because the dressing was changed by the previous shift. She types what she knows into the comment box and moves on. Six weeks later a quality analyst runs a wound surveillance report, and every one of those assessments is invisible, because comment boxes are not queryable. Nobody made an error. The design made the correct action expensive and the workaround cheap, and the workaround took the data out of reach.
Writing a current-state map at doctoral level means capturing exactly that: the steps as performed, the decision points, the handoffs between roles, and the moment each data element enters or leaves the system. A grader is not looking for a pretty diagram. A grader is looking for evidence that you went and watched, or that you reconstructed the process carefully enough from people who perform it that the steps have owners and durations attached.
The written product in this stage is typically a narrative analysis, often accompanied by a process diagram, sometimes with a table of data elements. If your section asks for a swimlane or flow diagram, remember that the diagram is not the assignment; the analysis of what the diagram reveals is. Students routinely spend six hours on shapes and forty minutes on the prose, and the scoring rows are almost entirely in the prose.
The other thing this stage teaches, and it is worth internalizing beyond the grade, is that current state includes the parts nobody is proud of. A map that shows only the sanctioned process is a map of a hospital that does not exist. Write the workaround, write why it is rational from the perspective of the person performing it, and then write what it costs downstream. That sequence is the whole discipline in miniature.
The NR-706 Week 2 method, step by step
Six moves for turning observed work into a written current-state analysis.
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Set the boundaries of the map before you draw anything
Name the trigger that starts the process and the event that ends it. Wound assessment begins when the dressing comes off and ends when the surveillance report is generated. Without a stated start and stop, a workflow map expands until it is a map of the whole department.
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Walk the process with the people who perform it
Watch at the workstation where possible, and ask each role to narrate what they do rather than what they are supposed to do. The phrase what do you do when that field will not take it produces more usable analysis than an hour with a policy binder.
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Record every step with an owner, an input and an output
A step without a role attached cannot be redesigned. Write who performs it, what they need in hand to perform it, and what exists afterwards that did not exist before, including whether the output is structured data, free text or spoken.
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Mark the workarounds and price them
For each deviation from the sanctioned process, write what makes the sanctioned version costly, roughly how long the workaround takes, and what the organization loses because of it. Workarounds are design feedback, and treating them as noncompliance forfeits the insight.
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Overlay the data elements onto the steps
Take your process and annotate it with the elements your problem statement depends on. For each one, note the capture step, the field type and whether it can be queried. This overlay is where a workflow map becomes an informatics document rather than an operations one.
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Write the three findings the map produced
Close by naming what the mapping exercise revealed that you did not know beforehand: a redundant entry, a delay you had not measured, an element captured in a form nobody can report on. A map with no findings has documented rather than analyzed.
A layout that makes a workflow analysis auditable
Our frame for a current-state workflow analysis, sized for roughly 1,200 to 1,500 words plus a diagram. It is our own outline, not anything the university issues, and your week's rubric outranks it wherever the two disagree.
| Section | What belongs in it | Word target |
|---|---|---|
| Scope and method of mapping | Process boundaries, how you gathered the steps, how many observations or interviews, and over what period. | 150 to 190 |
| Narrative of the process as performed | Step by step with roles, inputs and outputs, written in sequence so a stranger could follow it. | 300 to 360 |
| Workarounds and their causes | Each deviation, the friction that produced it, its rough time cost, and its downstream consequence. | 220 to 270 |
| Data element overlay | A table or tight paragraph mapping each element to its capture step, field type and reportability. | 200 to 240 |
| Findings | Three named discoveries the mapping produced, each stated as a claim rather than an observation. | 200 to 250 |
| Implications for redesign | Where in the process a change could be inserted, and what constraint any change will have to respect. | 130 to 170 |
Evidence craft for current-state documentation
State your method the way a researcher would. Two hours of observation across three shifts, plus four role interviews, is a method. Familiarity with the unit is not. Doctoral readers give substantial credit for a stated and modest method and very little for unsourced confidence about how things work.
Attribute your mapping convention. Process mapping, swimlane diagrams and value stream approaches come from named traditions with published guidance. Say which convention you used and cite it, so a reader can judge whether your symbols mean what they appear to mean.
Time is data. Where you can attach a duration to a step, do it, and say whether the number is measured or estimated. A step that takes ninety seconds and is performed sixteen times a shift is an argument. A step described as time consuming is an adjective.
Protect the people in your map. Roles, not names. Aggregate, not anecdote-with-identifiers. Where an observation would identify an individual staff member or a patient, write it at the level of the role and the step, and say in your method paragraph that you did so.
Cite the literature on the failure you found. Documentation burden, duplicate entry, alert handling and interruption during data capture are all studied phenomena. Placing your local finding beside published work is what turns a site observation into scholarship a doctoral reader can weigh.
Five mistakes that cost points in this week's territory
- Mapping the policy. A process copied from a procedure document is a statement of intent, and the whole value of this stage is the distance between intent and practice.
- A diagram with no analysis. Beautiful shapes carrying no findings will not clear an analysis row, and the prose is where the points live.
- Steps without owners. Passive constructions like the assessment is documented hide the role, and a step with no role attached cannot be redesigned or scored.
- Treating workarounds as misconduct. Framing staff behavior as noncompliance stops the analysis exactly where the design flaw begins.
- Skipping the data overlay. Without field types and reportability, you have written an operations map in a course that grades information flow.
Before you submit
- The process has a stated trigger and a stated end event
- Your mapping method names how many observations or interviews and over what window
- Every step carries a role, an input and an output
- At least two workarounds appear with their causes and their costs
- Each data element is mapped to a field type and a statement about whether it is queryable
- Three findings are stated as claims, not as descriptions
Mapping a workflow for NR-706?
Send the rubric and your observation notes out of Canvas. A premium original draft comes back in 24 to 48 hours with every step owned, the workarounds priced and the data overlay written, and revisions run until the grade lands.