| Course | NURS 839 Proposal Development (NURS839) |
|---|---|
| Module/Week | 8 |
| Assignment | Assignment 9 Scholarly Project Proposal Defense PowerPoint |
| Paper type | Proposal defense presentation (title slide, 13 content slides with speaker notes, reference slide) |
| Length | about 920 words, 3 double-spaced pages plus title page and references. Course guide: a PowerPoint presentation supporting the scholarly project proposal defense, built on the program's PowerPoint template |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| Points | 150 |
| School | Liberty University Online |
| Program | DNP |
| Where it sits | Module/Week 8 in Liberty's published NURS 839 course guide; current sections can differ |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NURS 839 Week 8
Proposal Defense: A Nurse-Led Silicone Foam Dressing Protocol for Operations of Three Hours or More, Presented to the DNP Project Committee
[Student Name]
School of Nursing, Liberty University
NURS 839: Proposal Development
Assignment 9: Scholarly Project Proposal Defense PowerPoint
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Slide text and speaker notes for the proposal defense; the hospital and its figures are composites, and the studies and Scripture cited are real.
Proposal Defense: A Nurse-Led Silicone Foam Dressing Protocol for Operations of Three Hours or More, Presented to the DNP Project Committee
Slide 1: Proposal Defense
- Dressing the sacrum and heels in long operations: a nurse-led protocol
- DNP Scholarly Project Proposal
- NURS 839
Speaker notes: Good afternoon. Thank you for serving on my committee. In the next twenty minutes I will present a project that asks whether a dressing we already stock can become routine care for patients in long operations, and whether that lowers the injuries we keep finding on our surgical units.
Slide 2: The Problem
- 47 sacral and heel injuries within 72 hours of long operations last year
- Dressings stocked; no protocol; use inconsistent and undocumented
- Injuries found on units, hard to trace to the operating room
Speaker notes: These are injuries wound care nurses identified through consultations, which probably undercounts the true number. The key point is that the problem is not a lack of an effective product. It is a lack of a reliable process for using it.
Slide 3: Purpose and PICOT
- Purpose: make prophylactic dressing routine for long operations and measure the effect
- Adults, three or more booked hours of anesthesia
- Sacrum and both heels dressed before positioning, up to three days
- Outcome: any new injury of stage 1 or higher at sacrum or heels, first 72 hours
Speaker notes: The comparison is the same twelve calendar weeks of the prior year. If asked why not a randomized design: the intervention is an established standard of care, and withholding it from a control group would not be appropriate for a quality improvement project.
Slide 4: Framework
- Iowa Model of Evidence-Based Practice (Iowa Model Collaborative, 2017)
- Trigger: injuries after long operations
- Pilot decision at month 3; integration decision at month 12
Speaker notes: The model's decision points give the project its milestones. At month three the team decides whether to continue, adapt or stop based on pilot data, which builds a safety valve into the plan.
Slide 5: What the Evidence Shows
- Pooled trials: early sacral injuries reduced by roughly four-fifths (Fu et al., 2025)
- Surgical trials: fewer injuries during and after operations (Wang et al., 2026; Yeo et al., 2023)
- Risk not only time: diabetes, obesity, low albumin, vasoactive drugs (Johansson et al., 2026)
- Gap: this exact protocol has not been tried as everyday care in a community hospital
Speaker notes: If asked about the quality of the evidence: the meta-analysis is level I, but its trials were largely unblinded, which is why my project uses structured assessment and two-nurse confirmation of every injury.
Slide 6: The Protocol
- Day before: schedule flags eligible cases
- Preoperative: baseline skin check
- After induction: three dressings before positioning
- Units: lift and inspect every shift; remove at three days
Speaker notes: The protocol is approved as a nursing standing order, so circulating nurses do not need an individual order. Sacral placement is agreed with the surgeon when it is near the preparation field.
Slide 7: Design and Setting
- Pre-post quality improvement, historical comparison
- Fourteen operating rooms, four surgical units, 350-bed hospital
- About 600 eligible patients per period
Speaker notes: The main threats are other concurrent changes, differences in detection between periods and few events. I will document concurrent changes, use the same calendar weeks and present results with confidence intervals rather than relying on a single test.
Slide 8: What Will Be Measured
- Primary: new sacral or heel injury, stage 1 and up, by 72 hours
- Secondary: stage, device-related injury, length of stay
- Implementation: adoption, penetration, fidelity, acceptability (Proctor et al., 2011)
- Skin checks that add warmth, firmness and pain to looking (Neu et al., 2026)
Speaker notes: The implementation measures matter because if injuries do not fall, they let us tell a weak intervention apart from a weak rollout. The skin assessment approach helps detect early injury in darker skin, where redness may not be visible.
Slide 9: Analysis
- Risk difference and relative risk with 95% confidence intervals
- Supporting tests: chi-square, or Fisher's exact for small counts
- Logistic model limited to diabetes and anesthesia time
- Weekly run charts; results by skin tone
Speaker notes: I rehearsed this plan on a practice dataset in SPSS. The rehearsal convinced me to lead with effect sizes and to limit the regression model, because roughly twelve injuries a period cannot support more than a couple of covariates. With a dozen events, honesty about precision is worth more than any p value.
Slide 10: Protecting Patients and Data
- CITI training completed
- Quality improvement status confirmed by hospital and university review
- Study numbers only; key held separately; secure hospital network
Speaker notes: The dressings are a low-risk standard of care. If a patient's skin reacts, staff record it and take the dressing off.
Slide 11: Limitations
- Pre-post design cannot exclude other explanations
- Baseline probably undercounted, biasing toward no effect
- Few events; imprecise estimates
- Single community hospital
Speaker notes: I would rather name these now than have them discovered later. The undercounted baseline is worth emphasizing: if anything, it makes a real improvement harder to show.
Slide 12: Dissemination
- Staff: dashboard and huddles
- Surgeons: department meeting
- Leaders: board quality committee report
- Profession: regional poster and SQUIRE 2.0 manuscript (Ogrinc et al., 2016)
Speaker notes: Results will be reported whatever they show, including a null result explained by the implementation data.
Slide 13: Faith and Purpose
- "As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40)
- An anesthetized patient cannot ask for protection
Speaker notes: This project is about service to patients who cannot speak for themselves during the hours they are in our care (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Matthew 25:40).
Slide 14: Request to the Committee
- Approve the proposal to proceed to review board submission
- Planned start: first week of next term
- First data review at week 6
Speaker notes: My request today is your approval of the proposal, so that I can submit it for quality improvement determination and begin preparation. Thank you; I welcome your questions.
References
English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)
Fu, T., Wu, X., & Yu, B. (2025). Efficacy of silicone foam dressings in preventing pressure injuries in the sacral and heel areas of patients: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Medicine, 12, Article 1644290. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2025.1644290
Iowa Model Collaborative. (2017). Iowa Model of Evidence-Based Practice: Revisions and validation. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 14(3), 175-182. https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12223
Johansson, V. R., Dahl, O., Falk, A. C., Nilsson, U., Dehara, M., & von Vogelsang, A. C. (2026). Risk factors for position-related injuries in adult surgical patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, 11, Article 100676. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnsa.2026.100676
Neu, C., Furtado, S., Dyck, R., Sheikh, F., Tremain, L., & Johnson, D. (2026). Early identification of pressure injury: An equity-informed initiative. Advances in Skin & Wound Care, 39(6), 288-293. https://doi.org/10.1097/ASW.0000000000000475
Ogrinc, G., Davies, L., Goodman, D., Batalden, P., Davidoff, F., & Stevens, D. (2016). SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence): Revised publication guidelines from a detailed consensus process. BMJ Quality & Safety, 25(12), 986-992. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2015-004411
Proctor, E., Silmere, H., Raghavan, R., Hovmand, P., Aarons, G., Bunger, A., Griffey, R., & Hensley, M. (2011). Outcomes for implementation research: Conceptual distinctions, measurement challenges, and research agenda. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 38(2), 65-76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-010-0319-7
Wang, C. Y., Liao, H. H., Hsieh, M. Y., & Lee, C. H. (2026). Soft silicone foam dressing for preventing intraoperative pressure injuries: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jopan.2026.08.022
Yeo, H., Hwang, J., Lee, M., No, D., & Jang, I. (2023). Effect of a prophylactic dressing for sacral pressure injuries in non-critically ill patients after general surgery: A randomized controlled trial. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 20(3), 259-268. https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12651
What the NURS 839 Week 8 instructions ask
Assignment 9 closes NURS 839 with the Scholarly Project Proposal Defense, supported by a PowerPoint built on the program's template and the final chapter of Moran, Burson and Conrad. The student presents the proposal to faculty and answers their questions; successful defense is a requirement for moving to implementation. The slides do not replace the written proposal. They distill it, presenting the argument for the project and the plan for carrying it out clearly enough that the committee can decide whether it is sound, feasible and ethical, and they prepare the student for the questions most likely to come about design, power, ethics and sustainability.
How this NURS 839 Week 8 example is built
After a title slide, the deck opens with the problem and the purpose, then states the PICOT question and the framework. One slide summarizes the evidence in three findings and the gap. Three slides present the protocol, the design and setting and the measures, followed by a slide on analysis and one on ethics and data protection. Limitations get their own slide, as does dissemination. The final content slide asks for approval and names the planned start date. Speaker notes for each slide contain what the student will say and, where useful, a prepared answer to a likely committee question, so the deck doubles as rehearsal material.
NURS 839 Week 8 grading rubric: where the points go
Defense presentations are typically evaluated on clarity and organization, fidelity to the written proposal, accurate presentation of evidence and methods, readiness to address feasibility, ethics and limitations, professional slide design following the template, appropriate citations and the student's ability to answer questions. Committees look for a student who can explain why each methodological choice was made and what the project can and cannot show, and who keeps the presentation within the allotted time. Slides crowded with text, or a deck that avoids the project's weaknesses, tend to draw the hardest questions. Speaker notes that anticipate those questions show preparation, and a final slide with a specific request shows the student understands that a defense ends in a decision.
NURS 839 Week 8 help: mistakes that cost points
Defense decks often copy paragraphs from the proposal onto slides and read them aloud, leaving no room for discussion. Put three or four short points on each slide and keep the explanation in your notes, where it can be spoken naturally rather than read from the screen. Give limitations their own slide; committees respect a student who names weaknesses before being asked. For each slide, write down the hardest question you could be asked and your answer, and practice saying the answer in two sentences. Rehearse with a timer and with a colleague playing a skeptical committee member, and end with the precise decision you want the committee to make.
Related NURS 839 sample papers
Other NURS 839 weeks
- NURS 839 Week 1: Article Critique and Leveling
- NURS 839 Week 2: Level of Evidence Table
- NURS 839 Week 3: Introduction and Literature Review
- NURS 839 Week 4: Proposal Methodology Paper
- NURS 839 Week 5: SPSS Analysis
- NURS 839 Week 6: Discussion Board Forum 2
- NURS 839 Week 7: Scholarly Project Proposal
More DNP sample papers
- NURS 753 Week 1: Mental Health Policy Paper
- NURS 832 Week 8: Outbreak Paper
- NURS 834 Week 8: Discussion Board Forum 2
- NURS 836 Week 8: Draft Dissemination Plan
NURS 839 Week 8 questions, answered
What is NURS 839 Assignment 9?
The Scholarly Project Proposal Defense PowerPoint, due in Module/Week 8 for 150 points, which supports the student's oral defense of the proposal before faculty.
Where can I find a free NURS 839 Week 8 sample paper?
The entire NURS 839 Week 8 defense deck for a nurse-led dressing protocol, with the notes behind each slide and the source list, can be read here at no cost.
How many slides should a DNP proposal defense have?
Programs vary, but a defense usually needs a title slide, about twelve to fifteen content slides covering problem through dissemination, and a reference slide.
What questions do committees ask at a DNP proposal defense?
Common questions concern feasibility, how outcomes will be measured, threats to validity, statistical power, ethical review, sustainability and what the student will do if results are disappointing.
Should limitations be included in defense slides?
Yes. A slide naming the design's limits and how they will be handled shows the committee that the student understands what the project can and cannot show.
Use it as a model, or ask for your own
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