NU708 Unit 1 Systems Thinking Iceberg Post Example

Course	NU708 Advanced Systems Leadership: Transforming the Health Care Organization
Unit	Unit 1
Paper type	Discussion board post
Length	About 360 words, 2 pages double-spaced
Format	APA 7 discussion post
School	Purdue University Global
Program	Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for NU708 Unit 1

Thirty-One Returns, Same Story Each Time: A Unit 1 Discussion Post Looking Beneath an Insulin Readmission Problem

NU708 · Unit 1 Discussion Board Post

Posted by [Student Name]

The hospital, units, figures and classmates are composite; the sources cited are real.

What this part is doingOpening with how the team used to explain each return shows the reader the habit the post is about to question.

Initial Post

Of the 214 patients our two medical-surgical units sent home last year on insulin they had never used, 31 returned to our 260-bed Dubuque hospital within 30 days for a low or high glucose. Every one of those returns got a short review. Read one at a time, each made sense: a call not made, a patient who skipped a dose.

Meadows (2008) argues that a system's behavior comes from its structure, and that events are only the visible tip of it. Read together, our 31 reviews show a pattern. Twenty-two of the patients were discharged after 1500, and 19 left on a Thursday or Friday. That pattern points to structures. Discharge orders are written late because hospitalists round on admissions first. Teaching is squeezed into the last hour because pens arrive from pharmacy only after the order. The outpatient diabetes class meets on Tuesdays, so a Friday discharge waits eleven days.

Below every "patient did not follow teaching" sat a discharge that left no time to teach.

The deepest layer is the assumption under those structures, that discharge teaching is a nursing task done at the end, not a process that starts at admission. Senge (2006) calls these mental models, and they are why our fixes, a new handout and a reminder to call, never changed the rate. If the structure produces late, rushed discharges, better handouts at 1600 will not help much. My project will start teaching on the first day of insulin and ask pharmacy to dispense the patient's pen at the same time.

What this part is doingMoving from events to a named assumption shows the post applies the model rather than describing it.

Reply to Marisol

Marisol, your falls data also cluster at shift change. Do you know whether that is the structure, staffing at 1900, or the timing of toileting rounds?

Reply to Theo

Theo, you traced ED boarding to bed meetings at 1000. Which layer of the iceberg would a change to the meeting time actually reach?

References

Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer (D. Wright, Ed.). Chelsea Green Publishing.

Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization (Rev. ed.). Doubleday.

What the NU708 Unit 1 assignment asks for

NU708's first board usually asks students to take the practice problem their DNP project addresses and explain it as a system rather than as a set of individual mistakes. Many prompts name the iceberg model or a similar tool and expect each layer, events, patterns, structures and mental models, to be filled with the student's own facts. Instructors want to see local evidence of a pattern, even a simple count, and a structure that plausibly produces it. The deepest layer, the assumption holding the structure in place, is where the post shows insight. Most sections ask for one or two systems sources and two replies. A reply works best when it asks a classmate which layer a proposed fix would actually reach, which keeps the conversation on structure.

How the NU 708 Unit 1 example is put together

The post opens with the habit it questions: event reviews that each blamed one step. It then gives the count, 31 returns among 214 patients, and reads the reviews together, finding the late-afternoon and end-of-week pattern. Meadows supplies the claim that events are the visible tip of a system's structure. Three structures follow, each stated in one sentence: hospitalists round on admissions first, the patient's own pen comes up from pharmacy only once the order is signed, and the diabetes class meets only on Tuesdays. A highlighted sentence links the blamed patient to the rushed discharge. Senge's mental models name the assumption under it all, and a margin note marks that move. The post closes with the project change, and the replies ask Marisol and Theo which structure their data point to.

NU708 Unit 1 rubric: what earns full points

Credit on this board rests mostly on whether the post really moves below events. A post that stays with incidents, however vivid, earns little for systems thinking. Points rise when a pattern is shown with numbers and when each structure is tied to the pattern it produces. The mental model is often scored as the mark of depth, so naming the assumption explicitly matters. Accuracy in using the source is weighed, and Meadows or Senge should be represented fairly. A link to the student's project shows application. The two replies carry their own share, judged on whether they push a classmate's analysis further, and timely posting, length and APA citation complete the rubric in most NU708 sections.

NU708 Unit 1 help from the desk

Weak Unit 1 posts often list causes, staffing, education, workload, and call that a system. Without a pattern drawn from local data, the iceberg has no middle layer and the post reads as opinion. Another frequent slip is naming a mental model so general, such as "people resist change," that it explains everything and therefore nothing. Some writers blame individuals again at the structural layer by calling a habit a structure. A reply that simply agrees with a classmate earns almost nothing. Start by pulling every incident report or review for your problem from the past year and sorting them by time, day or unit before you write a word. A custom post can be built around the problem your own project addresses, with replies matched to your board.

Get an NU708 Unit 1 example written to your instructions

Send the Unit 1 prompt, your practice problem and the rubric. A custom post looks beneath the events to the patterns and structures producing them, with replies if your board needs them. It arrives within 24-48h, and the first is free. 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.

More NU708 papers and DNP samples

NU708 Unit 1 questions, answered

What is the iceberg model in systems thinking?

A way of looking below single events to the patterns they form, the structures that produce those patterns and the assumptions that keep the structures in place.

Does a systems post need data?

A few local figures help, such as how often the problem recurs, but the focus is on explaining why it recurs.

How long should replies be?

A few sentences, ideally asking a classmate which structure behind their problem they could actually change.

Where can I find a free NU708 Unit 1 sample paper?

This page holds a full NU708 Unit 1 discussion board post that applies the iceberg model to insulin readmissions, from 31 event reviews to the structures and assumption behind them, with two replies.

Which structures does the NU708 Unit 1 sample find behind the readmissions?

Three: hospitalists writing discharge orders late because they see admissions first, pharmacy dispensing pens only after the order and an outpatient diabetes class held only on Tuesdays.