Potential collaborative project for Doctor of Nursing Practice students
Our Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) students collaborates with community clinical organizations and agencies to address real-world issues and problems in their Final DNP Project. Students work with an organization/agency in engaging in systems analysis and change to improve the health and wellbeing of groups and populations.
If you are an agency that has potential projects for students in our DNP program, we invite you to submit your project to us for a student to match with this opportunity. If you have more than one potential project, please complete and submit a form for each separate project. You will receive a confirmation message when you submit your project.
Submit your project idea
We are again seeking project ideas through July 5, 2024 for our DNP students to collaborate with clinical agencies and community organizations for the next cycle (Fall 2024 – Winter 2025). If you are interested in having our DNP students work with your agency/organization on a project, please submit your idea by clicking the link below.
Frequently Asked Questions
The projects need to have some elements of translation of scientific evidence or knowledge to the practice at your agency, or generation of practice-based evidence for your agency. This could be clinical evidence or evidence or knowledge from other disciplines such as organizational science or communication science as appropriate for the project.
Examples of possible DNP final projects:
- Agency or Community Capacity Building
- Needs Assessment
- Program Planning or Evaluation
- Policy Development or Evaluation
- Process or Practice Environment Improvement
- Quality/Safety Initiative or Improvement
- A stand-alone intellectual exercise that does not involve any agency or community collaboration (e.g., comprehensive review of best practices on websites; stand‐alone review of the literature)
- Knowledge generation expected from a PhD dissertation
DNP projects last for two quarters. Students are expected to spend nine hours, on average, per week working on their project.
- First quarter (late September to early December): Students work with designated personnel at your agency to clarify and finalize the focus of the project. Students then work with your designated personnel and their UW supervisory committee to develop a proposal describing how they plan to address the identified issues. Typically, their proposal includes a problem statement, project purpose and objectives, focused appraisal of relevant evidence, deliverables, implementation plan/steps, timelines, and potential barriers and resources. The supervisory committee evaluates the proposals in accordance with UW academic standards.
Before the quarter the plan will be implemented, your agency, the student, and the chair of the student’s supervisory committee must approve the student’s proposed plan in a signed Statement of Mutual Agreement.
- Second quarter (January to early March): Students collaborate with your agency to implement the proposed plan that was approved by your agency and their UW supervisory committee. By the end of the quarter, students write up their project, including findings and recommendations as an executive summary, and present their project at a poster session as their oral exam.
Yes. While this group of students will complete work in March, many projects are longer-term, and students are required to include a transition plan in their final executive summary for the agency. Further, we often work with agencies and continue projects year to year, with students building off the previous project and agency work.