Promoting scholarship as the underpinning of the DNP Capstone Project

Nurse practitioner faculty are challenged with defining the DNP Capstone project to reflect the rigor of doctoral education, yet with a degree of practicality. Additional considerations include differentiating across specialty focus, such as direct versus indirect care and entry point (e.g., post BSN or post MSN).  This presentation will describe the systematic and comprehensive process used at one university for developing a DNP Capstone guideline and evaluation rubric that adheres to the rigors of doctoral education and aligns with the Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice. Based on an innovative use of the logic model, initial activities of a task force comprised of a cross-section of faculty included identifying assumptions and influential factors that underlie the Capstone development process, performing a literature review regarding best practices,  benchmarking with peer institutions, and engaging key stakeholders to solicit input  regarding potential clinical practice problems. The cornerstone for guideline development involved integrating DNP expectations with the scholarship of application and integration as defined by Boyer and expressed in the DNP Essentials. Because doctoral education is a complex process of formation that students themselves must shape and direct, the task force analyzed and addressed key milestones that promote scholarship within context of a project proposal, proposal defense, and the final written and oral Capstone report.  Guidelines span both direct and non-direct patient care pathways.  Intentional alignment of the guidelines with the DNP essentials will be addressed, as well as how the guidelines advance opportunities for student-faculty scholarly publications. The next phase of our work is the development of a rubric to systematically evaluate the quality of our DNP students’ capstone projects. This rubric will reflect our definition of scholarship. This presentation will include the process used for rubric development and determination of interrater reliability in its application.