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Capstone Presentation Summary

The recording I viewed was Nurses Working Long Hours and the Effects it has on Patient

Safety, by Lindsay Crawford. This capstone was on a project based on Lindsays position as an

Administrative assistant in the prison system. During that time, she noticed an increase in nurse

errors in direct correlation to the long shift hours and excess over time worked by nurses. Some of

the errors she noticed were charting errors, missing medication doses, and not following up on

patients.

Lindsays research question is: Do nurses feel there is an increase in errors made by staff

working long hours? Lindsay plans on using the Qualitative Research Method to obtain data to

support her research question. She plans on gathering qualitative data by interviewing six triage

nurses from the prison system and six triage nurses from Shands. Lindsay believes her data along

with supportive references will help determine what schedules are best to ensure that the highest

quality of care is provided by nurses.

Lindsay incorporated many references and how the content of their research or articles

supportive her research question. Some of the references that Lindsay used were Donna Cardillo,

a registered nurse and a certified speaking professional who holds a diploma in nursing, a BS in

Health Care Management and an MA in Corporate and Public Communication. Chris Landrigan,

M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of pediatrics and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Scott

Gottlieb the commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration.

From the content of this presentation I learned about how sleep deprivation and exhaustion

can cause nurses to make errors and drive down patient satisfaction and the quality of care. Sleep

deprivation and exhaustion are brought on by nurses working long shifts and excess overtimes.
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Driving down patient satisfaction and the quality of care can cause patients to seek care elsewhere

and damage reputations. The long shifts and excess amount of over time can also be due to

inadequate budgets leading to a staff shortage and financial burdens faced by the nurses. Lindsays

research aims to help determine what schedules are preferred by the nurses to ensure the highest

quality of care.

Lindsays delivery was great. She has a very authoritative voice and was passionate about

her research topic and patient safety. I enjoyed Lindsays presentation and research topic. At the

end of the presentation during the chat I found some of the question interesting and believe Lindsay

did a great job answering them. The advice given by Dr. Awadzi was extremely valuable in helping

to better understand the fine tuning of the project. It educated on how to better structure the slides,

incorporate the right content in the slides, include a refutation, and to make sure adequate research

is done on how to properly collect data and execute interviews.