| Course | NU804 DNP Project II |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 9 |
| Paper type | Leadership reflection |
| Length | About 930 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NU804 Unit 9
Leading From the Middle of a Hospital: A Unit 9 Reflection on Doctoral Leadership During an Insulin Bundle Implementation
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
NU804: DNP Project II
Unit 9 Leadership Reflection
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The hospital, people and events are composite; the competencies and sources cited are real.
Why Reflect Against the Essentials
The 2021 AACN Essentials organize advanced-level nursing competence into ten domains (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2021). Four of them, on safety, partnership with other professions, working within systems and my own development as a leader, were tested directly by this implementation. I chose four domains because the implementation tested each of them directly. For each, I describe a moment, what I did, how well it met the domain and what I learned.
Moment One: A Plan With the Wrong Dose
Domain 5, Quality and Safety. In the ninth week, a resource nurse's audit found three discharge plans with doses that did not match the final order. One patient's basal dose was printed as 24 units when the order read 18. My first instinct was to find out which nurses had made the errors. I did not act on it. Instead I asked the two resource nurses to walk me through how a plan was produced on a busy discharge morning, and the cause was obvious: plans were printed from morning orders and corrected by hand after the hospitalist's visit.
I reported the near miss through the event system, presented it at both units' huddles as a system failure rather than a personal one and changed the plan to print from the final reconciliation. In a study of work teams, Edmondson (1999) found that the groups where people believed they would not be punished for speaking up talked more openly about mistakes and sought feedback more often. The resource nurses later told me that staff on 3 West had been worried about being named. Nobody was, and two more near misses were reported in the following month, both minor, which I take as a sign the units felt safe to report.
Where I fell short. I had built a plan template without asking when in the day nurses would print it. The error was predictable, and testing the template on a real discharge morning would have found it.
The near miss was a test of whether I would look for a system or for a person, and the units were watching which one I chose.
Moment Two: The Hospitalists
Domain 6, Interprofessional Partnerships. When hospitalists discharged patients before the supervised dose, I first asked their director to remind them of the protocol, which changed nothing. I then attended their meeting with data they cared about and a proposal that fit their rounds, moving the supervised dose to the evening before. They added a line to their order set.
This moment showed me that partnership means designing the change with the other profession, not informing them of it. It also showed me that I had treated physicians as a group to manage rather than colleagues with a different set of pressures.
Where I fell short. I still have not done the same work with case management, whose staff arrange the follow-up the bundle depends on. That is my first task in NU806.
Moment Three: The Weekend Pharmacy
Domain 7, Systems-Based Practice. The first weekend starter left without his pen because the outpatient pharmacy was closed. The quick fix would have been to tell nurses to delay teaching to Monday. Instead I worked with the pharmacy director on why pens came only from the outpatient pharmacy, learned that it was a billing choice rather than a rule and proposed weekend take-home pens from the inpatient pharmacy. The committee made it permanent after a six-week trial.
This domain asks doctoral nurses to work within complex systems and to understand how policies, finances and operations shape care. The weekend gap was a billing decision with a clinical effect, and fixing it required learning how pharmacy is paid.
Moment Four: My Own Development
Domain 10, Personal, Professional and Leadership Development. Of the four parts of transformational leadership that Bass and Riggio (2006) set out, the two I have changed most are challenging people to think problems through for themselves and attending to each person's own growth. In the pilot I solved problems for staff. Now I ask the resource nurses what they think is causing a problem before I offer an answer, and three of the five adaptations logged so far came from them. The resource nurse on cardiac step-down, who took on the oncology calls, told me she had never been asked to design anything before.
Where I fell short. I still take on too much myself. In week eleven I covered a resource nurse's audits during her vacation rather than asking a colleague to learn the tool, which left the audit dependent on me again.
What I Will Practice in NU806
1. Meet case management's leaders with data on missed follow-up and a proposal designed with them.
2. Train a second person on each audit so that no part of the measurement depends on me.
3. Test every new tool on a real shift before go-live.
4. Keep asking resource nurses for their explanation first.
Closing Thought
I began implementation thinking leadership meant making sure the protocol was followed. Three months later I think it means building conditions in which nurses, physicians and pharmacists choose to make the bundle work, and noticing which choices of my own make that harder.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education. https://www.aacnnursing.org/Portals/0/PDFs/Publications/Essentials-2021.pdf
Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
The Purdue Global NU804 Unit 9 instructions
Unit 9 commonly asks for a reflection on the student's leadership during implementation, linked to the AACN Essentials or another competency set the course names. Expect to choose a few domains, describe a specific moment for each and judge your performance honestly. Instructors look for growth and for shortfalls, since a reflection that finds only strengths is not credible at the doctoral level. Sources on leadership or team learning should help explain what happened. The paper usually ends with concrete practices for the rest of the project. First-person writing is expected, with examples detailed enough that a reader could picture them. Two to four well-developed examples serve better than a tour of every domain, and each should show a decision the student made, not only an event that occurred.
Inside the NU804 Unit 9 example
The reflection opens by naming four Essentials domains and why each was tested. The first moment, the plan-accuracy near miss, describes an instinct to find the nurses responsible, the decision not to act on it and the system fix, with Edmondson's work explaining the later rise in reported near misses, under a highlighted line about the units watching which choice was made. The second moment covers the hospitalists, and the third the weekend pharmacy gap traced to a billing decision. The fourth section uses Bass and Riggio to describe a shift toward asking resource nurses for their explanations. Each section ends with a named shortfall, from untested templates to covering audits personally. Four practices for NU806 and a short closing thought finish the paper.
Reading the NU804 Unit 9 grading rubric
Leadership reflections are typically graded on specificity, honest self-assessment and use of the competency framework. Each domain should be tied to a real moment, with the student's decision and its result described. Graders reward named shortfalls and penalize reflections that list only achievements. Leadership readings earn credit only where they make sense of the events, such as research on psychological safety for a near miss. Growth should be visible, with a contrast between earlier and current practice. The closing plan earns credit when its practices are concrete and connected to the shortfalls. Professional first-person writing and respectful description of colleagues are expected. Accurate APA 7 citations for the Essentials and every leadership source complete the rubric for this unit.
NU804 Unit 9 help from the desk
The most common weakness in leadership reflections is a list of competencies with a sentence of praise for each. Another is describing events without the student's own decision in them, so the reader cannot judge the leadership. Some students avoid any shortfall, which makes the paper read like a performance review written by its subject. Others cite leadership models without applying them to anything that happened. Plans that promise to be a better leader add nothing; name the practice and when you will use it. Before writing, list the three hardest moments of your implementation and what you did in each. Tell us about those moments, and a reflection can be built around them and the domains your course names.
Get an NU804 Unit 9 example written to your instructions
Send your experiences, the Essentials or competencies named and the instructions with the rubric. A custom reflection links what you did to doctoral competencies. It comes back 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.
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NU804 Unit 9 questions, answered
Which competencies should the reflection use?
Usually the AACN Essentials domains, or those your course names.
Should the reflection be in first person?
Yes, with specific examples from implementation.
How many examples are enough?
Two or three well-chosen ones usually serve better than a long list.
Where can I find a free NU804 Unit 9 sample paper?
You can find the complete NU804 Unit 9 leadership reflection on this page, examining three moments from an insulin bundle implementation against four domains of the AACN Essentials.
What shortfalls does the NU804 Unit 9 sample admit?
Building a plan template without testing it on a real discharge morning, not yet partnering with case management and covering a resource nurse's audits personally instead of training a colleague.