A nine-item check-in form and a call-note audit sheet, each with a coding guide and trial-prompted wording changes, are the instruments in NU603's Unit 3 collection tool. Searches like "nu 603 unit 3 assignment example", "nu603 unit 3 sample" and "nu603 unit 3 example" land here.
A Nine-Item Check-In Form and a Call-Note Audit Sheet: Data Collection Tools for Measuring Clear-Liquid Fasting
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
NU603: Evaluating and Disseminating Principles of Advanced Nursing Practice - Clinical
Unit 3 Data Collection Tool
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The site and trial figures are composite and bracketed; completed forms and the conversations behind them belong to the writer and site and are never part of this sample.
Instrument A: Check-In Fasting Form
Filled in at the check-in desk by the admitting nurse, in the order the conversation already runs. Study number replaces the patient's name; the linking list stays on the site's secure drive.
1. Arrival time (24-hour clock): [__:__]. Feeds the arrival band and every duration.
2. Time of last solid food: [__:__]. Separates food from fluid, the old field's gap.
3. Time of last clear liquid: [__:__]. The primary outcome. Printed beside it: "Clear means water, sparkling water, juice with no pulp, black coffee or tea. Milk or creamer is not clear."
4. Time of any milk, creamer or milky drink: [__:__] or none. Added after the trial.
5. Thirst now, 0 (none) to 10 (worst imaginable): [ ].
6. Hunger now, 0 to 10: [ ].
7. The stop time you were told to finish drinking by: [__:__] or does not remember. Checks whether the instruction reached the patient.
8. Where did that instruction come from? Pre-admission nurse / surgeon's office / both / unsure. Reworded after the trial.
9. Nurse initials and form completion time: [ ] [__:__].
Instrument B: Call-Note Audit Sheet
Completed weekly by the writer for [20] call notes drawn at random from the week's pre-admission calls.
1. Study number of the call note.
2. New script line present in the note: yes / no.
3. Stop time documented: yes / no.
4. Patient excluded from the standard script: yes / no.
5. If excluded, reason: exception line (delayed gastric emptying, GLP-1 receptor agonist, other anesthesia referral) / not reached / other.
Every audit item is present or absent, so two auditors reading the same note should record the same answer. A second auditor, the pre-admission charge nurse, will independently code [five] notes in weeks [two] and [six], and agreement will be reported as a simple percentage.
Coding Guide
Times: record on the 24-hour clock to the nearest [fifteen] minutes; a patient who says "around six" is coded [06:00] with a flag in the margin. Crossing midnight: if a reported time is later than the arrival time, it belongs to the previous calendar day; the duration is then calculated as arrival minus reported time plus 24 hours. Impossible values: a duration below zero or above [24] hours after the midnight rule is flagged, not deleted, and reviewed against the nurse's note. Missing: a blank is coded as missing, never as zero; "does not remember" is coded separately from a blank. Item 3 when the patient drank milk only: code item 3 as missing and item 4 with the time, so the milk drink counts as food. Item 8 with more than one box ticked: code as both.
Development Note
Each item exists for a reason in the evaluation plan. Items 1 and 3 produce the primary outcome, the gap between the final clear drink and arrival. Item 2 lets the analysis compare solids and liquids separately, which the old field could not. Items 5 and 6 add patient comfort, which the stakeholders mentioned repeatedly. Item 7 tests whether the call's instruction reached the patient, and item 8 traces conflicting advice to its origin, a concern the applying course's progress report raised about surgeon office sheets.
The thirst and hunger scales are borrowed from common perioperative practice. They are not a validated instrument for this purpose, and the form does not use them as a proxy for what is in the stomach; studies have found such ratings do not predict gastric content volume (Buehrer et al., 2014). They are measures of comfort, reported as such.
Trial Report
The writer and two pre-op nurses trialed the form with [ten] consecutive adult patients over [two] mornings. Median completion time was [48] seconds. Two problems appeared.
First, [three] of [ten] patients called coffee with creamer a clear liquid, and one said the same about a latte. Under the anesthesia policy, milk-based drinks follow the rule for a light meal, not for clear liquids (American Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Standards and Practice Parameters, 2017). The definition was therefore printed beside item 3, and item 4 was added to capture milk and creamer separately, so the analysis can reclassify rather than guess.
Second, the original item 8 asked "Who told you when to stop drinking?" and [four] patients named the surgeon personally, although the instruction had come from the office sheet or the call. The rewording lists the channels, not the people, and adds unsure.
The revised form was retested with [five] patients and no further changes were needed. Testing a tool on a few cases before full use, then adjusting it, follows the same small-cycle logic as the change itself (Langley et al., 2009).
Use and Storage
Paper forms are placed in a locked box at the check-in desk and collected daily by the writer, who enters them into a spreadsheet using study numbers only. The spreadsheet and the linking list sit in separate folders on the site's secure drive. Forms are shredded after entry is checked.
References
American Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Standards and Practice Parameters. (2017). Practice guidelines for preoperative fasting and the use of pharmacologic agents to reduce the risk of pulmonary aspiration: Application to healthy patients undergoing elective procedures. Anesthesiology, 126(3), 376-393. https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0000000000001452
Buehrer, S., Hanke, U., Klaghofer, R., Fruehauf, M., Weiss, M., & Schmitz, A. (2014). Hunger and thirst numeric rating scales are not valid estimates for gastric content volumes: A prospective investigation in healthy children. Pediatric Anesthesia, 24(3), 309-315. https://doi.org/10.1111/pan.12276
Langley, G. J., Moen, R. D., Nolan, K. M., Nolan, T. W., Norman, C. L., & Provost, L. P. (2009). The improvement guide: A practical approach to enhancing organizational performance (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
How this NU603 Unit 3 example is structured
Each item exists because a measure in the evaluation plan needs it, and the development note says which. The form is ordered to follow the conversation a pre-op nurse already has: when did the patient arrive, last eat, last drink. Clear liquid is defined on the form with examples, after the trial showed patients counting creamer as clear. The source-of-instruction item traces conflicting advice to its origin, answering a worry the progress report raised. Thirst and hunger scales are borrowed from common practice rather than a validated instrument, and the tool says so. The audit sheet is deliberately binary, present or absent, so two auditors would agree. The coding guide handles the one arithmetic trap in the data, times that cross midnight. Completed forms, and the check-in conversations behind them, belong to the writer and the site, never to the sample.
Get an NU603 Unit 3 example written to your instructions
Attach your evaluation plan and the measures each item must feed, plus a note on who will complete the form and how long they have. Include the Unit 3 prompt and rubric. The first custom sample is free and returns within 24-48h: an instrument, a coding guide and a trial note to replace with your own. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
NU603 Unit 3 questions, answered
Should a practicum data collection tool use a validated instrument?
Use one where it exists and fits, and cite it. Many practicum measures, such as times or yes-or-no audit items, need no validation, while attitudes or symptoms often have established scales. Where a simple rating is used instead, say so plainly. The sample borrows zero-to-ten thirst and hunger ratings and labels them as practical rather than validated.
How large should a pilot of the tool be?
Small is usually fine; the purpose is to find confusing items, not to test the intervention. A handful of respondents often reveals wording problems quickly. Report what the pilot showed and what you changed. The sample's trial of ten check-ins found patients counting coffee with creamer as a clear liquid, and the form gained a definition as a result.
Who should complete the data collection form?
Whoever already has the conversation it depends on, where possible, so the tool adds minutes rather than a new step. Agree on this with your preceptor and the staff involved before collection starts. In the sample, pre-op nurses complete the form during check-in, and the writer audits call notes separately, keeping collection inside existing work.