NURS 499 Cancer Screening Capstone Project Presentation.

Capstone Proposal for Cancer Screening

Executive Summary

The capstone project will entail assessing the use of primary and secondary education in cancer screening and prevention. The capstone project will be conducted at the Tisch Cancer Institute, which focuses on cancer research and treatment. The targeted population will include family members of patients diagnosed with cancer admitted at the facility. The healthcare practitioners working at the facility will be used to collect data and assess the effectiveness of offering patients and their family members primary and secondary education as a way of increasing awareness about cancer screening and promotion uptake of cancer prevention measures.

Organizational Description

The identified clinical site for the capstone project was the Tisch Cancer Institute (TCI). It is an integral part of the Mount Sinai Health System (MSHS). The clinical facility uses multidisciplinary approaches in cancer research and developing treatment options for cancer patients. The goal of the facility is to advance clinical breakthroughs in cancer prevention and management and developed scientific approaches that can be used to eradicate cancer. The facility was established in 2008 through the collaboration and generosity of James and Merryl Tisch. They recruited more than eighty scientists and physicians involved in population science research. The team has worked together in developing innovative research programs that build upon the research and works conducted by MSHS (ICAHN, 2020).

TCI has created early cancer detection and prevention programs for lung, breast, gastrointestinal, liver, and prostate cancer. More than 200 of the staff working at the facility are engaged in cancer-related research. The facility has been praised for having effective community-based programs and their commitment to promoting population health. They value the use of patient-centered approaches and manage more than 300,000 patients annually (Parsons, 2020).

The mission of the facility is to advance basic, clinical, and population health cancer research in order to prevent cancer in healthy individuals and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families in the diverse communities (ICAHN, 2020). My project will promote the data collection method used at the facility to determine the knowledge that affected populations have about cancer prevention, screening, and treatment. It will also ensure that community members are educated about the importance of cancer screening as a method of promoting early detection and management of cancer.

Target Population

The targeted population for the capstone project will be individuals between 19 and 65 years attending the TCI facilities. The targeted individuals will be family members whose relatives have been diagnosed with different forms of cancer and utilize the facility for cancer management. The target population will exclude the patients who have already been diagnosed with cancer. They will be questioned on whether they had received any form of primary or secondary education relating to cancer screening and prevention during their visits. They will also be questioned on whether the education received prompted them to go through the screening processes or take up any cancer prevention practice that could promote their health.

Aside from the patient attending the facility, another group involved in the research will be healthcare practitioners and researchers working at TCI who are involved in offering screening services to patients and their family members. The healthcare practitioners will be questioned about their use of primary and secondary education during the cancer screening process and when conducting other preventive measures meant to reduce the rates of cancer in the area.

Assumptions

Some of the planning assumptions that have been considered include funding, timeframe for conducting the capstone project, use of technology in collecting and documenting the data, legal processes related to ethical consideration processes, dependency on the other researchers and healthcare workers working at the facility. The data collected from the facility will be conducted on days assigned for screening services. This will reduce the need for going to the facility daily. The technology used will be a data collection application meant to obtain data about the healthcare practitioners screening practices and the access to primary and secondary patient education services on prevention and screening of cancer.

Ethical consideration will entail involving the board of directors at the facility in discussions on the ethical considerations related to the capstone project. The ethical consideration will focus on obtaining informed consent from the individuals whose data will be collected and promoting anonymity and confidentiality during data collection. This will ensure that the information collected from the patients’ family members and the staff working at the facility will be protected.

Business Care

The cost of the capstone project will rely on the time taken to collect data from the facility. Funding will be considered before the implementation of the capstone project. Some of the factors that will be considered in the financial plan will include the data collection method, transportation to the facility, questionnaire transcripts that will be used to assess the population, and funds directed towards statistical analysis. The timeframe for the capstone project will be one month.

The budget meant for the questionnaires that will be used for data collection will be based on the number of participants identified at the facility. The funds used for the statistical analysis will be directed towards purchasing a reliable statistical data analysis tool that will be effective in analyzing the data collected from the staff and the rest of the individuals that will be included in the capstone project. Additionally, the budget will also cater for the final capstone project compilation and printing.

Project Team Structure

The functions of the project manager will include planning, organizing, and leading the rest of the team. The project manager will be a nurse practitioner. Planning will entail ensuring that all the resources required for the project have been identified before the initiation of the project. The project manager will also participate in developing the budget and participating in negotiations with the leaders at the facility regarding utilizing their facility for the project. In terms of organizing, the team manager will be involved in ensuring that all the resources for conducting the project such as questionnaires on primary and secondary education and other data collection tools are available. The leading role will involve coordinating the activities of the project to ensure that the project is conducted smoothly.

Aside from the project manager, other team members who will be involved in the project will include healthcare professionals working at the facility such as nurses and physicians. The two nurses included as team members will be involved in implementing the plans developed by the project manager, conducting the assessments on the target populations, and working collaboratively with each other in assessing the target population. The physician will also work collaboratively with the nurses in establishing the importance of the primary and secondary education offered to promote screening and preventive measures. The team members will also be responsible for offering the target population screening services for different types of cancers and advising them on preventive measures that they can use.

Communication and Change Management Plan

For the successful implementation of the project, some of the individuals in the organization that will need to be communicated to about the project will include board of directors for the facility and some of the healthcare workers involved in conducting other research studies directed towards the promotion of cancer screening and prevention. The change framework created to implement the project will entail defining and assessing the change that needs to be implemented.

The change required to be implemented will involve implementing the primary and secondary education approaches to promote screening, and prevention of cancer. Definition of the change will be followed by engaging the healthcare facility, healthcare practitioners, and target population in the process of conducting the primary and secondary education process.

The third stage would involve managing the change process and sustaining the change by ensuring that all the family members coming to the facility with a patient diagnosed with cancer are educated about the importance of screening, screened for common cancers, and educated on preventing measures. Sustaining the change will entail ensuring the primary and secondary education processes are retained at the facility to promote screening practices. Sustaining the project will also involve conducting community education on cancer prevention and offering community members free screening services.

Quality Plan

Some of the measures that will be put in place to promote quality during the project will include ensuring that the data collection methods are pre-tested. The questionnaires that will be used on the targeted population will be pre-tested to ensure that they capture the desired information. Other quality measures that will be put in place include implementing the proper analysis of the data collected from the targeted population to eliminate risks of errors and use of quality assurance tools. The quality assurance tool that will be used in the project will be a control chart. The control charts will be used to assess the outcomes of the facility’s management of screening and preventive services. An effective audit procedure that will be used will entail using a check sheet to document the individuals in the target population who have been assessed.

Project Controls

Some of the project controls measures that will be used include cybernetic, Go/no-go control, and post-performance control approaches. The cybernetic control approach will entail ensuring that all the processes needed to be completed before the implementation of the capstone project are implemented in time. This will involve activities such as obtaining permission from the facility and engaging the healthcare practitioners in the process. The Go/no-go control will entail testing some of the participants to ensure that the pre-conditions for performing the capstone project are met. The post-performance control will be used after the implementation of the project to ensure that the data collected and analysis done offers conclusive evidence of the efficiency of the primary and secondary education techniques used (Bahuguna, Aersen, & Kumar, 2015).

Summary

The project will promote the primary and secondary education strategies used by the facility to promote cancer screening and its prevention in the community. Some of the benefits that this project will offer the facility will include illustrating the differences that conducting primary and secondary education will have in determining the number of people using the facility for cancer screening services. By educating the family members of patients diagnosed with cancer, the facility will ensure that these individuals invest in occasional cancer screening to promote early detection and management of cancer. The facility focuses on improving cancer prevention and treatment. This project will ensure that the facility can easily identify patients at risks for cancer-based on genetic histories, lifestyle, or other factors and offer them the appropriate care.

References

Bahuguna, J., Aersen, A., & Kumar, A. (2015). Existence and Control of Go/No-Go Decision Transition Threshold in the Striatum. PLOS Computational Biology, Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004233.

ICAHN. (2020). The Tisch Cancer Institute. Retrieved from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: https://icahn.mssm.edu/research/tisch

Parsons, R. (2020). Message from the Director. Retrieved from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/specialty-reports/cancer?accordionAction=accordion-jump_link-49625792