| Course | NU 725 Technology and Nursing Informatics in Advanced Practice |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 7 |
| Paper type | Informatics project proposal |
| Length | About 1,060 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | MSN |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NU 725 Unit 7
Proposal: Automatic Transfer of Vital Signs From Bedside Monitors to the Record on a Medical Unit
Student Name
Department of Nursing, Herzing University
NU 725: Technology and Nursing Informatics in Advanced Practice
Instructor Name
March 3, 2026
Proposal: Automatic Transfer of Vital Signs From Bedside Monitors to the Record on a Medical Unit
Decision Requested
The nursing informatics council is asked to approve a six-month pilot on the 28-bed medical unit, 4 West, connecting the unit's existing portable vital signs monitors to the electronic health record so that measured values transfer to the vital signs flowsheet after the nurse or technician confirms the patient and the readings. Approval would commit the council to the costs and staffing below and to a go or no-go review at the end of the pilot.
The Problem, With a Baseline
On 4 West, patient care technicians measure vital signs every four hours with portable monitors, write the values on a paper form, and enter them in the record later, usually at the end of a round. A two-week audit on the unit last month compared 240 paper values with the corresponding record entries. Thirty-one of 240 sets, 13%, contained at least one transcription error, most often a transposed digit or a value entered in the wrong patient's record. The median time from measurement to entry was 52 minutes, and for 18% of sets it exceeded two hours. During that delay, the early warning score the hospital uses to trigger rapid response, which is built from exactly these vital signs (Royal College of Physicians, 2017), calculates from stale values. These findings are consistent with published experience: in one hospital that moved from manual entry to automated transfer of vital signs, documentation errors fell substantially after the change (Fieler et al., 2013).
The Change, as a Clinician Would Experience It
Before: the technician wheels the monitor into the room, measures blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate, temperature, and oxygen saturation, writes them on a paper sheet, and at the end of the round logs into a workstation, opens each patient's flowsheet, finds the time column, and types the values. After: the technician wheels the monitor into the room and scans the patient's wristband with the scanner attached to the monitor. The monitor displays the patient's name. The technician measures the vital signs, enters the respiratory rate by counting, since the monitor does not measure it, and presses Send. The values appear in the flowsheet within seconds, marked as device-transferred and time-stamped with the time of measurement, and the early warning score recalculates immediately. Two steps disappear, the paper form and the later typing, and one new step arrives, the wristband scan.
Workflow Before and After
Per round of eight patients, the current process takes a median of 34 minutes: 24 minutes measuring and writing, and 10 minutes typing at a workstation. In a vendor demonstration on a similar unit, the integrated process took a median of 26 minutes for eight patients, saving about eight minutes per round, or roughly 48 minutes per technician per 24 hours. The larger gain is in timeliness: values would be in the record within a minute of measurement rather than within an hour, and the early warning score would be based on current data.
Alternatives Considered
Two alternatives were considered and are not recommended. The first is retraining technicians and adding a second check of transcribed values by the nurse. It costs little, but it adds work to both roles and leaves the delay untouched, and double-checking transcription has a poor record of catching errors that the first person made under the same conditions. The second is continuous wireless monitoring of all patients on the unit with automatic charting at set intervals. It would remove manual measurement entirely, but it is far more expensive, would generate many more alarms on a unit where most patients are stable, and would require a new alarm management policy before it could be used safely. The proposed pilot sits between these options: it removes the transcription step, which is the source of both the errors and the delay, while keeping a person at the bedside who decides when values are sent.
Cost, With Assumptions
Hardware: the unit's 10 portable monitors are already capable of wireless transfer; 10 wristband scanners at an estimated $450 each total $4,500. Software: the interface license from the monitor vendor, estimated at $18,000 for the pilot unit, based on the vendor's quote. Build and testing: 120 hours of analyst time and 40 hours of informatics nurse time. Training: one hour for each of 24 technicians and 40 nurses, about 64 staff hours. Support: informatics nurse presence on the unit for the first three days of go-live on all shifts. These estimates assume the hospital's wireless network covers every room on 4 West, which was confirmed by network services.
Risks, Including the Ones That Arise From the Change
Wrong-patient transfer: if the scan is skipped or the wrong wristband is scanned, values could go to the wrong record. Mitigation: the monitor requires a scan before sending, displays the name for confirmation, and values cannot be sent without a confirmed patient. Artifact: an automated value that is an artifact, such as a falsely low oxygen saturation from a cold finger, may be sent without the judgment that manual entry sometimes provided. Mitigation: values are sent only after the user presses Send, and training emphasizes rechecking implausible values before sending. Over-reliance on the monitor: respiratory rate, which the monitor cannot measure, might be skipped or estimated. Mitigation: the flowsheet will not file the set without a manually entered respiratory rate. Network outages: a downtime procedure reverts to paper. These risks reflect the sociotechnical nature of health information technology, in which a change to hardware and software also changes people's work and can create new failure modes (Sittig & Singh, 2010).
Measures and the Go or No-Go Decision
Measured before and during the pilot: transcription error rate, by repeating the 240-set audit at three months; median time from measurement to record entry, from device timestamps and flowsheet filing times; technician time per round, by observation; wrong-patient transfers, reported through the safety reporting system and reviewed individually; and technician and nurse satisfaction by a short survey. The pilot will be judged successful if the transcription error rate falls below 3%, median time to entry falls below 5 minutes, and no wrong-patient transfer reaches a clinical decision. If these targets are met, the council will be asked to approve expansion to the other medical units; if not, the causes will be reported with a recommendation to revise or stop.
References
Fieler, V. K., Jaglowski, T., & Richards, K. (2013). Eliminating errors in vital signs documentation. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 31(9), 422-427. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.ncn.0000432125.61526.27
Royal College of Physicians. (2017). National Early Warning Score (NEWS) 2: Standardising the assessment of acute-illness severity in the NHS. Royal College of Physicians.
Sittig, D. F., & Singh, H. (2010). A new sociotechnical model for studying health information technology in complex adaptive healthcare systems. Quality & Safety in Health Care, 19(Suppl. 3), i68-i74. https://doi.org/10.1136/qshc.2010.042085
What the NU 725 Unit 7 instructions ask for
The Unit 7 assignment asks you to propose an informatics solution or technology change for a problem in your setting. Expect to describe the problem with baseline data, explain the proposed solution and how it would change workflow, consider alternatives, estimate costs and resources, identify risks, and plan how success will be measured. Stakeholders, training and adoption often appear in the prompt too. Check whether your section expects a specific format, such as an executive summary or a formal proposal with headings. A proposal works best when it names a specific unit, a specific technology class and a clear decision for leaders to make. You can describe a product type without naming a vendor. Use real published evidence for expected benefits and state cost assumptions openly.
Inside the NU 725 Unit 7 example
The paper opens with the decision requested, so the council knows what it is being asked to approve before reading any detail. The problem section rests on a local audit with counts, not general claims about documentation burden. The change is described from the technician's point of view, step by step, which makes the workflow impact concrete. A section compares median times before and after, citing the demonstration and published experience. Two alternatives get a fair hearing and clear reasons for rejection. The cost section lists hardware, software, build hours and training with each assumption stated. Risks include ones the change itself creates, such as values sent to the wrong chart. Measures and thresholds for continuing or stopping close the proposal, tying it to the baseline audit.
Reading the NU 725 Unit 7 rubric
Herzing rubrics for an informatics proposal generally give points for the problem statement and baseline, the proposed solution, workflow and stakeholder considerations, cost and resources, risks, evaluation plan, and writing. The problem criterion rewards local data and literature that show the need. Solution points require a clear description of what changes and why it fits the setting. Workflow and stakeholder criteria look for attention to the people who will use the system. Cost points go to itemized estimates with stated assumptions. The risk criterion earns full credit when unintended consequences of the technology are included. Evaluation points require measurable outcomes compared with a baseline and a decision rule. The writing row covers persuasive organization, professional tone and APA 7 citations for the evidence on transcription errors and early warning scores.
NU 725 Unit 7 help before you submit
The most common mistake on Unit 7 is a proposal that describes the technology in detail but never states the problem it solves with evidence. Another is listing benefits from vendor claims instead of published studies. Students frequently omit alternatives, which makes the recommendation look predetermined. Cost sections often give a single total with no assumptions, so the grader cannot judge it. Risks are usually limited to downtime, missing problems the change creates, such as wrong-patient data. An evaluation plan without a baseline cannot show improvement. Proposals sometimes skip the people involved, especially technicians or unit clerks whose work changes most. Finally, end with a clear request and decision point, because a proposal without one reads like a literature review.
Get a NU 725 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 7 instructions and the rubric from your NU 725 classroom, plus the problem you want addressed and any format your instructor requires. We write a custom example against those instructions, with the workflow change, the costs and the adoption work carried through, and return it in 24 to 48 hours. The first one is free.
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NU 725 Unit 7 questions, answered
How do I estimate cost without inventing numbers?
Work in categories and state the assumptions instead of producing a total. Name the roles needing training and the hours each would require, the configuration effort, the support coverage at go live and the ongoing maintenance, then say what you assumed for each. Where published figures exist, cite them. A reader trusts visible reasoning more than a confident total with nothing behind it.
Does the proposal need to name a specific product?
Not usually, and naming one early can narrow the argument before the requirement is established. Describing what the change must do, in workflow terms, keeps the proposal about the problem. If your instructions ask for a product comparison, set requirements first and evaluate against them, using independent sources rather than the materials each seller publishes about itself.
Why does adoption need its own section?
Because most informatics changes fail there rather than technically. Clinicians work under time pressure with established routines, and a new step competes with the one already in muscle memory. A section naming who trains whom, what support exists in the first shifts, who champions the change on each shift and what happens when people revert is what makes the proposal credible.
Where can I find a free NU 725 Unit 7 sample paper?
The full NU 725 Unit 7 vital signs integration proposal is on this page without charge, from the request and baseline to costs, risks and the go or no-go rule. For your own technology and unit, a custom proposal can be drafted to your section's format.
How do I estimate costs in a nursing informatics proposal?
List each cost type separately, such as hardware, software licenses, build hours and training time, and state the assumption behind every figure. This sample estimates scanner and interface costs with those assumptions shown so a reader can adjust them.