A last piece of context. This code is a one-credit DNP Field Experience in Walden's catalog, and the six practicum hours per credit that the catalog specifies come to 72 hours of field work. It is repeatable, six times over at the outside, with the permitted number following from hours accrued to date. Doctoral candidates use it to make up the distance to the 1,000-hour practice minimum, so the course is elective in effect rather than compulsory. What this page offers is craft for converting field experience into portfolio evidence, and it describes no assignment that recurs on a weekly schedule.
The last stage of a project sequence asks two questions that have nothing to do with writing more pages. Who inherits the change once you leave, and what does the record of your field experience prove about you. That means an executive summary short enough for a director to read standing up, a dissemination choice made by audience rather than by habit, a sustainability plan with a named owner and a measure that keeps being collected, and an hours log where each entry connects an activity to a competency. Whether the closing deliverable is a discussion, a submitted portfolio, or both, is settled by your syllabus alone.
Putting handover last is our own instructional choice, made because sustainability is unwritable until results exist, and it should not be mistaken for a published Walden order. Syllabi are not posted where the public can read them, and the course guides that would settle the sequence require a student login. Follow the rubric attached to your own deliverable wherever it differs from this page. Both NURS 8600 and NURS8600 lead here.
What the closing rubric rows reward
The dissemination row wants an audience and a format that match. A unit newsletter, a system quality council presentation, a poster at a professional meeting and a manuscript reach different people and cost different amounts of effort, and the row asks you to justify the pairing rather than list options.
The sustainability row is the one most often written weakly. Naming the person who owns the measure after you go, the meeting where it will be reviewed, and the document that carries the change into policy is worth more than several paragraphs about the importance of continuing.
The field experience record is graded as evidence, not as arithmetic. Hours totaled without context prove attendance, while entries that name an activity and the competency it demonstrates prove development, and doctoral rows are written to find the second kind.
Six moves that close a project properly
These are the final passes our doctoral desk runs before a project document is handed to a chair.
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Write the one page version for the person who signs
Problem, what you did, what changed, what it costs to keep, and what you are asking for. Executives read the first and last sentences, so put the request in both.
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Choose the audience before choosing the format
Decide who has to act on this, then pick the vehicle that reaches them. A poster impresses a conference and changes nothing on the unit that generated the data.
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Name the person who inherits the measure
Sustainability lives or dies on whether a specific role keeps producing the number, and whether it appears on a standing agenda somewhere. Write both into the plan.
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Put the change into a document that outlasts you
A revised policy, an updated order set, an orientation module or an audit added to an existing schedule. Practice reverts when the change lives only in the memory of the people who were there.
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Turn hours into evidence of a competency
Rewrite log entries so each activity states what it demonstrates. Attended committee meeting proves nothing, while led the revision of the reconciliation protocol and presented it for approval proves several things at once.
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Leave the file in a state your chair can open
One document, sections in handbook order, appendices numbered and referenced, tables labeled, references reconciled against every citation in the text.
A layout for the closing deliverable
The frame below is our own, offered for drafting, and the balance among its parts should follow the rubric your classroom posted.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the row |
|---|---|---|
| Executive summary | Problem, intervention, result, cost to sustain, and the decision requested. | One page a director can act on without reading the full project. |
| Dissemination plan | Each audience, the format chosen for it, and the timing. | A pairing justified by who needs to act rather than by what is customary. |
| Sustainability plan | The owner, the standing forum, and the measure that continues. | A named role and a named meeting, with the reporting interval stated. |
| Policy or workflow artifact | The document that carries the change after the project ends. | A real artifact attached as an appendix, not a promise to write one. |
| Field experience record | Activities, hours, and the competency each activity supports. | Entries that read as evidence of doctoral practice rather than as attendance. |
| Final assembly | Section order, appendices, tables, and the reference list. | A document assembled to handbook order with every citation reconciled. |
Annotated sample excerpt: a handover written to hold
Our writers produced the closing passage below to show sustainability described as a mechanism instead of an intention.
Ownership of the group visit schedule transfers to the clinic's lead medical assistant, whose existing role already includes panel management, and the completion rate for quarterly group visits joins the four measures her team already reports at the monthly operations meeting.1 The change survives in two documents rather than in anyone's memory: the visit template approved by the informatics committee, and a two page workflow added to the onboarding packet every new medical assistant receives, so a staffing change no longer erases the practice.2 Dissemination follows the people who must act, which means the operations meeting first, the parent network's diabetes work group second, and a poster only afterward, because a conference audience cannot approve the scheduling template this clinic still needs.3
- 1The owner is a specific role whose existing duties already contain the work, which is what makes the transfer plausible rather than aspirational.
- 2The change is written into two durable documents, so the practice does not depend on the continued presence of the people who piloted it.
- 3Dissemination is sequenced by who can act on the findings, and the poster is honestly demoted to last place.
Send your final rubric and the sections you have so far, and the first premium sample is free, with the summary written for a decision maker, the sustainability owner named, and the log rewritten as competency evidence.
Five mistakes that cost points at the closing stage
- A summary that reads like an abstract. Executives need the decision they are being asked to make, and a scholarly abstract buries it under methods.
- Dissemination chosen by prestige. A poster is easier to plan than a conversation with the committee that controls the workflow, and only one of them keeps the change alive.
- Sustainability written as encouragement. Continued monitoring is recommended assigns nothing to anyone, and the row is looking for a role, a forum and an interval.
- No artifact left behind. When nothing enters policy, orientation or the order set, practice returns to baseline within a quarter and the project has bought a term of attention.
- Hours logged as totals. A column of numbers proves time was spent, while an entry naming the activity and the competency proves the doctoral work the record exists to document.
Pre-submission checklist
- The executive summary fits one page and states the decision requested
- Each audience is paired with a format and a reason
- A named role owns the continuing measure
- A standing meeting reviews it at a stated interval
- The change is written into a policy, template or orientation document
- Every log entry ties an activity to the competency it demonstrates
Closing the project out?
Send the final rubric along with your draft sections and the log as it stands. An original closing package returns inside 24 to 48 hours with the executive summary, the dissemination pairing, a sustainability owner and competency-linked entries, and revisions stay free until the rows are met.