Graded Against the Essentials: A Doctoral Student's Evidence, Gaps, and Plan for Each DNP Essential
Student Name
Doctor of Nursing Practice Program, Aspen University
DNP850: Nursing Practice, Professionalism, and Scholarship
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Graded Against the Essentials: A Doctoral Student's Evidence, Gaps, and Plan for Each DNP Essential
The DNP Essentials are often read as a description of what doctoral programs teach. They can also be read as standards against which a doctoral student's practice can be graded. This paper takes that second view. For each of the eight Essentials, it states what the standard requires, what evidence from eight years of practice in a composite outpatient heart clinic meets it, where I fall short, and how I plan to close the gap through coursework and my DNP project. It closes by relating the eight Essentials to the ten domains of the newer competency model.
Method of Self-Assessment
Each Essential was rated as met, partly met, or not yet met, based on concrete evidence rather than self-perception: documents I have produced, changes I have led, and feedback from colleagues. The standards come from the profession's 2006 statement of what doctoral education for advanced practice must include (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2006).
Essentials I to III: Science, Systems, and Scholarship
Essential I, scientific underpinnings for practice, asks the DNP to integrate nursing science with knowledge from other sciences to guide practice. I apply pathophysiology and pharmacology daily, but I have rarely used nursing theory explicitly. Rating: partly met. Plan: ground my project in a named theory selected in my theory course.
Essential II, on leading organizations and systems toward better quality, asks the DNP to lead change in organizations and systems. I have participated in improvement committees but have never led a change from design through evaluation. Rating: not yet met. Plan: lead my project on post-discharge follow-up with a defined team and timeline.
Essential III, clinical scholarship and analytical methods for evidence-based practice, asks the DNP to appraise and apply evidence and evaluate practice. I read guidelines and update my prescribing, and I recently reviewed our clinic's follow-up data. Rating: partly met. Plan: complete a structured appraisal and synthesis for my project and design its evaluation.
Essentials IV to VI: Informatics, Policy, and Collaboration
Essential IV, information systems and patient care technology for improvement and transformation of health care, asks the DNP to use technology to improve care and evaluate systems. I use the electronic health record fluently, and I built a report of heart failure discharges with our analyst. Rating: partly met. Plan: work with informatics to build an automated flag for discharged patients without appointments.
Essential V, health care policy for advocacy in health care, asks the DNP to analyze and shape policy. I have never contacted a legislator or written a policy brief. Rating: not yet met. Plan: in the policy course, prepare a brief on telehealth reimbursement for post-discharge visits and meet with a legislative aide.
Essential VI, interprofessional collaboration for improving patient and population health outcomes, asks the DNP to lead interprofessional teams. I collaborate daily with cardiologists and pharmacists, but mostly as a participant. Rating: partly met. Plan: convene the case managers, schedulers, and pharmacists for my project and facilitate its meetings.
Essentials VII and VIII: Population Health and Advanced Practice
Essential VII, clinical prevention and population health for improving the nation's health, asks the DNP to analyze population data and design interventions for groups. My follow-up review is my first population-level analysis; I have not yet examined differences by race, language, or distance from the clinic. Rating: partly met. Plan: stratify follow-up rates by those factors and design outreach for the groups most often missed.
Essential VIII, advanced nursing practice, asks the DNP to demonstrate advanced clinical judgment and systems thinking in a specialty. With eight years as a nurse practitioner and national certification, this is my strongest area. Rating: met. Plan: maintain it while developing the others, and mentor newer nurse practitioners. My clinical expertise is the Essential I can already prove; the others are the ones the doctorate exists to build.
From the Essentials to the Newer Domains
The profession has since moved to a competency-based model with ten domains that apply at entry and advanced levels, ranging from the knowledge base of nursing and person-centered care to quality and safety, informatics, professionalism, and a final domain devoted to personal, professional, and leadership development (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021). The newer model makes some gaps sharper. Its domain on personal, professional, and leadership development highlights that I have no structured plan for my own growth as a leader, and its emphasis on competencies demonstrated in practice reinforces that my ratings must rest on evidence, not intentions.
Summary of Ratings and Priorities
Across eight Essentials, one is met, five are partly met, and two are not yet met. The pattern is consistent, and it fits the observation that a nurse can be expert in one domain and a novice again on entering a new one (Benner, 1982): my strengths lie in individual clinical practice, and my gaps lie in leading systems change, shaping policy, and analyzing populations. My priorities for the next year are therefore to lead my DNP project from design to evaluation, which addresses Essentials II, III, IV, VI, and VII together, and to complete a policy brief and legislative meeting, which addresses Essential V. The project is the single most important vehicle for meeting the standards, because it requires all of them at once.
Who Else Should Grade Me
A self-assessment has an obvious weakness: I am grading myself. To reduce that bias, I asked two colleagues, the clinic's medical director and a senior nurse manager, to review my ratings. The medical director agreed with most of them but judged my interprofessional collaboration more generously, noting that cardiologists already seek my input on complex patients. The nurse manager judged my systems leadership more harshly, pointing out that improvement ideas I raised in meetings were rarely followed through. Both perspectives were useful, and the second was the more important. I will repeat the review with my faculty mentor at the midpoint and end of the program, so that the evidence for each Essential is judged by someone other than me.
Conclusion
Reading the DNP Essentials as graded standards turns them from a list into a plan. My self-assessment shows that I enter doctoral study as a strong clinician and a novice systems leader. The evidence I produce over the coming year, a completed project, a policy brief, and a population analysis, will determine whether I meet the standards by graduation.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2006). The essentials of doctoral education for advanced nursing practice. Author.
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education. Author.
Benner, P. (1982). From novice to expert. American Journal of Nursing, 82(3), 402-407. https://doi.org/10.2307/3462928
How this DNP 850 Module 2 example is structured
DNP850 Module 2 papers typically examine the essentials of doctoral practice as graded standards. Aspen does not publish module deliverables, so check your classroom for the exact prompt. This example states a rating method, assesses each Essential with evidence and a plan, links the Essentials to the current competency domains and summarizes priorities.
DNP850 Module 2 questions, answered
What does DNP850 Module 2 usually ask for?
The module typically asks you to examine the DNP Essentials, often by assessing your own practice against them or analyzing how they define doctoral practice. Aspen does not publish module deliverables, so your classroom's instructions govern.
How do the 2006 DNP Essentials relate to the 2021 Essentials?
The 2006 document defined eight essentials for doctoral advanced practice. The 2021 Essentials replaced them with a competency-based model of ten domains with entry-level and advanced-level competencies, including systems-based practice and personal, professional and leadership development.
How can a DNP project address several Essentials?
A well-designed project requires leading systems change, appraising and applying evidence, using informatics, collaborating across professions and analyzing population data, so completing it produces evidence for several Essentials at once.
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