DNP 852A Module 7 The Structured Abstract Example

Two Hundred Eighty Words for Eighteen Months: The Structured Abstract of a Pediatric Asthma DNP Project

Student Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice Program, Aspen University

DNP 852A: Project Manuscript

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Two Hundred Eighty Words for Eighteen Months: The Structured Abstract of a Pediatric Asthma DNP Project

The abstract is the part of a DNP project most people will read, and often the only part. It has to compress a year and a half of planning, implementation and analysis into a few hundred words that are accurate, specific and fair about the design. This paper presents the structured abstract for my project on a pediatric nurse asthma visit, then explains the choices behind each part. It closes with shorter versions for other audiences.

The Abstract

Background: A written asthma action plan and regular checks of inhaler technique are recommended for every patient with asthma, yet at a pediatric primary care clinic serving mainly publicly insured families, fewer than a third of children with persistent asthma had a current plan and 28% had needed emergency or urgent care in a year.

Local problem and aim: The aim was more children in good asthma control, and fewer needing acute care, within 12 weeks.

Methods: A single-group before-and-after quality improvement design was used, with each child compared with their own prior 12 weeks, supported by run charts of clinic-level plan coverage and a comparison of acute visits with the same months a year earlier.

Interventions: In a 40-minute visit, registered nurses wrote a symptom-based plan in the family's language, coached spacer use until the child could show it back, sent the plan to school with consent and called two weeks later. Six adaptations to supporting tasks were made during delivery.

Results: Of 104 children enrolled, 91 had complete control data. Well-controlled asthma rose from 21% to 57% (p < .001), correct inhaler technique from 19% to 70% and the share needing acute care from 18% to 8% (p = .008). Clinic-wide plan coverage rose from 31% to 47%, a non-random shift. Results were similar in Spanish- and English-speaking families.

Conclusions: A nurse-led action plan and technique program was followed by substantial improvement in asthma control and fewer acute visits. The design cannot establish cause, and a stronger test across clinics is recommended.

Why These Headings

The headings follow those that the SQUIRE 2.0 guidelines suggest for the abstracts of improvement reports: background, local problem, methods, interventions, results and conclusions (Ogrinc et al., 2016). They differ from the headings of a research abstract in two ways that matter here. The local problem heading states the gap at this clinic, which is the reason an improvement project exists, and the interventions heading has its own space, because readers need to know what was actually done in order to judge whether they could do it.

Choosing the Numbers

An abstract can carry only a few numbers, so each was chosen for a reason. The baseline figures in the background, the plan coverage and the share of children needing acute care, establish the gap. The results give the three outcome changes with the two p values that belong to the question, the clinic-wide shift and one equity finding. Left out were the mean score changes on each instrument, which would require explaining two scales, the effect sizes and the early and late cohort comparison, all of which belong in the full manuscript. Andrade (2011) advises that an abstract report the main findings with actual numbers rather than vague descriptions such as improved significantly, and that it avoid details the reader cannot interpret without the paper; both principles guided the cuts.

Wording the Claim

The conclusion uses followed by rather than caused and names the design's limit in the same paragraph. The results heading also names the design implicitly by reporting before and after figures without a comparison group. This wording was checked against the alignment matrix, which had already found and fixed an earlier draft that said the program reduced acute visits. The background sentence on plans and technique is supported in the manuscript by the national guidelines (National Asthma Education and Prevention Program, 2007), but an abstract cites nothing, so the claim is worded as widely recommended practice.

Keywords

Six keywords were chosen to match terms that a nurse or clinic leader would search: pediatric asthma, asthma action plan, inhaler technique, nurse-led care, quality improvement and safety-net primary care. Each appears in the title or abstract, which helps retrieval in databases that search both.

Broader terms such as asthma alone were avoided because they return too many unrelated studies.

Each was tested in two databases first.

Testing the Abstract on Readers

Before submission, the abstract was given to three readers with different needs: the committee chair, a nurse at the health system's other pediatric clinic and a parent from the clinic's family advisory group. The chair asked for the design to be named explicitly in the methods rather than implied, and the sentence was revised. The nurse wanted to know how long the visit took, so the 40-minute figure was added to the interventions. The parent found the term well-controlled unclear, which did not change the scientific abstract but shaped the plain-language newsletter version, where it became having few symptoms and rarely needing the rescue inhaler.

Shorter Versions

Two shorter versions were written for other audiences. A 150-word version for a nursing conference keeps the aim, the intervention, the three main results and the conclusion with its limit, and drops the run chart and equity findings. A 90-word version for the health system's newsletter uses plain language, reports that more than half the children had well-controlled asthma after the program compared with about one in five before, and invites other clinics to contact the nurse lead. Both were checked against the full abstract so that no version claims more than the manuscript supports.

Neither shorter version adds new claims.

Conclusion

The abstract compresses the project into about 280 words under improvement-report headings, carries the numbers that define the gap and the change, and states its conclusion in language the design supports. Shorter versions adapt the same content for a conference and for colleagues, without adding claims.

It is ready for the committee.

References

Andrade, C. (2011). How to write a good abstract for a scientific paper or conference presentation. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 53(2), 172-175. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.82558

National Asthma Education and Prevention Program. (2007). Expert panel report 3: Guidelines for the diagnosis and management of asthma (NIH Publication No. 07-4051). National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Ogrinc, G., Davies, L., Goodman, D., Batalden, P., Davidoff, F., & Stevens, D. (2016). SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence): Revised publication guidelines from a detailed consensus process. BMJ Quality & Safety, 25(12), 986-992. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2015-004411