MSN FP 6210 Assessing competitive advantages

Write a 4–7-page analysis of your care setting that supports development of a strategic plan and includes both the discovery and dream phases of an appreciative inquiry (AI) project and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis of the care setting.

Note: Each assessment in this course builds on the work you completed in the previous assessment. Therefore, you must complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.

SHOW LESS

Identifying analysis techniques for assessing competitive advantage is important for building health care strategy. Sustaining health care competitive advantage requires that leaders understand environmental demands to assist with minimizing weakness and threats from the external environment. This assessment provides you with an opportunity to examine your health care environment to determine whether what is being accomplished in your organization, department, team, community project, or other care setting is making a positive difference.

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

Competency 1: Evaluate qualities and skills that promote effective leadership within health care organizations.
Analyze the leadership characteristics and skills most desired in the person leading potential performance improvement projects, taking both an appreciative inquiry (AI) and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) approach.
Competency 2: Apply strategies to lead high-performing health care teams to meet organizational quality and safety goals.
Synthesize stories and evidence about times when a care setting performed at its best with regard to quality and safety goals.
Conduct a SWOT analysis of a care setting, with respect to quality and safety goals.
Describe an area of concern identified in a SWOT analysis—relevant to a care setting’s mission, vision, and values—that should be improved.
Compare the AI and SWOT approaches to analysis with regard to data gathering and interactions with others.
Competency 3: Apply cultural, ethical, and regulatory considerations to leadership decision making.
Propose positive, attainable quality and safety improvement goals for a care setting.
Competency 5: Communicate with stakeholders and constituencies to build collaborative partnerships and create inclusive work environments.
Communicate analyses clearly and in a way that demonstrates professionalism and respect for stakeholders and colleagues.
Integrate relevant and credible sources of evidence to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.