NU703 Unit 3 Boyer Scholarship Model Application Example

One Box Nearly Empty on Purpose: Applying Boyer's Four Scholarships to an Early Mobility Project in a 25-Bed Rural Hospital, and Testing It Against Glassick's Six Standards

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

NU703: Professional Role Development of the DNP-Prepared Nurse

Unit 3 Scholarship Model Application

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The hospital, author and plans are composite; numbers and dates are bracketed.

Introduction

In Scholarship Reconsidered, Ernest Boyer argued that academic work should be understood as four overlapping forms of scholarship rather than research alone: the scholarship of discovery, which creates new knowledge; of integration, which draws separate fields together and interprets what they show; of application, which uses knowledge to address real problems and is later often called engagement; and of teaching, which transmits and extends knowledge through education (Boyer, 1990). His framework has been widely adopted in nursing because it recognizes forms of work that practice-focused faculty and clinicians already do.

This paper applies Boyer's model to my planned DNP project, an early mobility program for older medical patients at [Valley Community Hospital], a critical access hospital with [25] beds, where I am the nurse manager for the medical-surgical unit.

The Project

Older patients on our unit spend most of their time in bed. A [two]-week audit found that patients over [65] walked outside their rooms on fewer than [one-third] of hospital days. Low mobility during hospitalization is associated with loss of function after discharge. In a randomized trial at a Veterans Affairs medical center, older patients who received an in-hospital mobility program, with assisted walking up to twice daily and a behavioral strategy to encourage it, maintained their community mobility a month after discharge better than patients who received usual care, although their performance of basic daily activities did not differ (Brown et al., 2016). My project will adapt a similar program to a small rural hospital with no dedicated mobility staff.

The Four Quadrants

Integration. The first part of the project is a synthesis of mobility literature across nursing, physical therapy and geriatric medicine. These disciplines study the same problem with different measures: nurses count walks, physical therapists measure gait and strength, and geriatricians track function after discharge. Bringing them together to decide what our program should measure is integration in Boyer's sense, making connections across disciplines to give findings new meaning. This quadrant is full.

Application. The core of the project is the protocol itself, the assignment of roles to nurses and aides, and the tracking of outcomes on the unit over [six] months. It applies existing knowledge to a real problem in a specific setting and evaluates the result. This quadrant is the fullest of the four.

Teaching. The project includes a competency module for nursing aides on safe assisted walking, taught in person and checked by return demonstration. This is scholarship of teaching only in part: the module transmits knowledge but does not, as Boyer's teaching scholarship would require, study how aides learn or publish findings about teaching. It could become full scholarship if I evaluated the module and shared what I learned.

Discovery. This quadrant holds only a note: any new knowledge would come through partnership with a nurse scientist. My project is not designed to test a hypothesis or produce generalizable findings, and it will not have a control group. If the program works, a question such as whether aide-led walking is as effective as therapist-led walking in rural hospitals would be worth a trial, but that is a researcher's work, and I would contribute as a site partner.

The discovery box stays nearly empty on purpose, because a practice doctorate is built to apply and integrate knowledge, and pretending otherwise would weaken the project.

Testing the Project Against Glassick's Standards

A later Carnegie report proposed six standards by which any form of scholarship can be judged, beginning with clear goals and ending with reflective critique (Glassick et al., 1997). Applying them to my project shows where it is strong and where it needs work.

Clear goals. The project has one primary goal, increasing the share of hospital days on which older patients walk outside their rooms from under [one-third] to at least [two-thirds], and a secondary goal of reducing loss of function at discharge. This standard is met.

Adequate preparation. The integration work across three disciplines, together with the audit of current practice, prepares the project well. I have not yet consulted with our one physical therapist, who works at the hospital only [three] days a week; that step is scheduled for [month].

Appropriate methods. The project uses quality improvement methods, run charts and plan-do-study-act cycles, which suit a practice setting. The measures chosen from the integration work, walks per day and a brief function score at admission and discharge, are feasible for nurses to collect. This standard is met, with the caution that without a control group the project cannot prove that the program caused any change.

Significant results. Whether the project meets this standard cannot be known until it is done. What can be said now is that the goals were chosen to matter to patients and to the hospital.

Effective presentation. I plan to present results to hospital leadership and at a state rural health conference. I have not yet planned a written publication, which this standard would favor.

Reflective critique. The project includes a final evaluation of what worked, what did not and why, but I need to add a structured way to record decisions during the project, such as a log of each PDSA cycle, so that the critique is based on evidence rather than memory.

Why This Pattern Suits a Practice Doctorate

The pattern, strong in application and integration, partial in teaching and nearly empty in discovery, is what a practice doctorate should produce. AACN's position on defining scholarship for academic nursing recognizes the scholarship of practice, in which clinicians use evidence to improve care and evaluate the results, as a legitimate form of scholarship alongside discovery (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2018). A DNP project that tried to fill every quadrant equally would either overreach into research it is not designed for, or spread too thin to change practice on the unit.

Conclusion

Boyer's model helps me see what my project is and what it is not. It is scholarship of application and integration, with some teaching. It is not discovery, and naming that clearly lets me plan partnerships for the questions it raises rather than claiming answers it cannot provide. Glassick's standards show two gaps to fix before I begin: a plan for written dissemination and a log for reflective critique.

References

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2018). Defining scholarship for academic nursing.

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Brown, C. J., Foley, K. T., Lowman, J. D., Jr., MacLennan, P. A., Razjouyan, J., Najafi, B., Locher, J., & Allman, R. M. (2016). Comparison of posthospitalization function and community mobility in hospital mobility program and usual care patients: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 176(7), 921-927. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.1870

Glassick, C. E., Huber, M. T., & Maeroff, G. I. (1997). Scholarship assessed: Evaluation of the professoriate. Jossey-Bass.