CSP: Using Education and Mobile Medication Adherence Application to decrease Blood Pressure Among African American Adults
Community support programs (CSP) are an important part of professional nursing. For a DNP, CSP is even more important since it stamps their care in professional specializations. CSP provides an opportunity for the Advanced Practicing Nurses (APNs) and DNPs to offer services to diverse populations affected by a healthcare problem. Even more important is that CSP programs contribute to eliminating social determinants of health. DPNs are expected to provide nursing assessment, patient education services, mobile medication, and culturally sensitive care to African Americans to reduce hypertension through drug adherence. Below are how a DNP can apply the four essentials of DNP to achieve a successful CSP with African Americans’ as the targeted population.
Essential I: Scientific Underpinnings for Practice
The first essential of a DNP is to apply scientific underpinning for practice. This critical element recommends that DNPs use specific nursing theory during practice. DNPs are expected to apply nursing scientific-based concepts to improve patient outcomes in the CSP context involving ways of improving adherence to medication for hypertension to reduce disease prevalence. The theory to use in this case is Pender’s health promotion model (Musemwa & Gadegbeku, 2017). Pender’s model focuses on individual characteristics and experiences while applying for the educational program. The DNP application of Pender’s model will require specific cognition, and that directly affects behavioral outcomes. Pender’s health promotional model will require that the targeted African American patients be taught while considering their individual and varying characteristics.
Essential II: Organizational and Systems Leadership for Quality Improvement
The second essential is about showing systemic leadership skills through applying care strategies that appeal to humankind. Nursing science is never applied in a vacuum. Nursing science is applied to humanity through proper leadership that leads to evidence-based intervention and evaluated practice outcomes. In applying the mobile medication as an application to promote medication adherence among hypertensive African Americans, this essential II also applies. Leadership involves team-building (Bahabadi et al., 2020). Team-building occurs by collaborating with the community leaders, social health workers, and church leaders to contribute to community outreach. The use of community leaders contributes to trust between the DNPs involved in the CSP and the African American targeted community (Bahabadi et al., 2020). From the analysis above, it is clear how to apply essential II to the CSP to reduce hypertension prevalence.
Essential III: Clinical Scholarship and Analytical Methods for Evidence-Based Practice
As a DNP, the third essential requires that one applies unique approaches to modern healthcare complex issues. Modern healthcare requires a modern solution. In the current case study, the complex problem is that most African Americans do not adhere to medication due to beliefs that hypertension is a disease for the whites and that it does not affect people of color. The creative solution that a DNP can apply to this challenge is to interface with mobile medication to achieve medication adherence while the prevalence of hypertension is reduced. Mobile medication is a platform to reduce stigmatization and myths regarding African American prevalence of hypertension as a disease. As analyzed above, the fourth essential of DNP practice is contributing to a community support program.
Essential IV: Information Technology and Patient care technology for the transformation of Health Care
Technology is at the center of care. Any DNPs need to integrate the use of technology and their practice. An in-depth understanding of technology is an essential issue as the DNP is advantageous in delivering healthcare through innovation and appropriateness. In the CSP under discussion, technology and innovation are applied through enhancing community lifestyle interventions. For instance, it is relevant to wear a tracking device for African American patients to track their adherence is easy (Valdres & Smith, 2019).
In conclusion, the DNP program’s essentials largely contribute to the competency required to address some of the increasingly complex needs in the modern health care system. For the case study analysis above, it is clear that all nursing practices, including CSP, require the DNP program’s essentials.
References
Bahabadi, F. J., Estebsari, F., Rohani, C., Kandi, Z. R. K., Sefidkar, R., & Mostafaei, D. (2020). Predictors of health-promoting lifestyle in pregnant women based on Pender’s health promotion model. International Journal of Women’s Health, 12, 71. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7047988/.
Musemwa, N., & Gadegbeku, C. A. (2017). Hypertension in African Americans. Current cardiology reports, 19(12), 129. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11886-017-0933-z.
Valdres, R., & Smith, M. (2019). DNP essentials and its application to clinical practice: Practicum I synthesis paper. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11886-017-0933-z.