Date Available

8-3-2015

Year of Publication

2015

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Committee Chair

Dr. Nora Warshawsky

Clinical Mentor

Teresa Centers

Committee Member

Dr. Debbie Hampton

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on the process and outcomes of a DNP practice inquiry project.

Design: The design is a pretest posttest comparative evaluation.

Setting: The University of Kentucky Healthcare Chandler, Samaritan, and KY Children’s hospitals.

Subjects: A voluntary convenience sample of nurse managers was obtained (n=10)

Intervention: The intervention was a 2 hour didactic session and an individualized one-on-one educational session focused on general healthcare finance terms and more specifically on personnel budgeting and productivity metrics

Measures: The pretest and posttest consisted of 20 questions obtained from healthcare finance texts and preparatory materials for national certification exams. The pre and post self-assessment used the finance portion of the Nurse Manager Leadership Partnership’s (NMLP) Nurse Manager Skill Inventory (AONE, 2006)

Results: A paired sample t test was used to determine if there was a significant difference in means pre and post education. There was a significant (p=0.001) difference in posttest scores as compared to pretest scores. Pre and post education self- assessed competence questions (11 questions) were divided between unit level financial competence (six questions) and system level financial competence (five questions). Both means showed significant differences post education.

Conclusions: Because the sample size was very small and was a convenience sample, these results may be attributed to chance. The results obtained while not generalizable, do point to the potential effectiveness of a hospital based financial management course aimed at nurse managers using similar material and teaching techniques. These materials and methods should be studied using multiple institutions and regions to validate the use of the content as well as the constructivist techniques and tools.

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