. As the moderator, you will not submit traditional answers to the discussion board. Instead, you will engage in discussion with your peers from the perspective of a course leader or mentor. The nature of your interactions should be positive and invite further discussion that fosters creativity and expansion of the DNP role. Your responses and posts should be substantive in nature. A substantive post may include a question, sharing insight with scholarly reference, and helping students to interact with one another in creative ways.

Evaluate a culture/population of interest to assess a current need.  Examples may include patients in various care environments, gender identity groups, racial identity, ethnic identity, etc. 

As a current armed forces service member, the Veteran population is one that I admire deeply and there are several needs that can be addressed. 

Using the population/culture identified, devise a culturally sensitive response plan that addresses a specific need in that population. What objectives will you meet through this response plan?

Within the Veteran population, the specific need that I will be focusing on is suicide prevention. By creating a culturally-sensitive response plan, it will encompass all members within the veteran population, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or background. The response plan will be specific, realistic, time-oriented and have attainable goals (Toney-Butler & Thayer, 2020). As a DNP prepared nurse, utilizing a plan is essential for goal setting. The first part of this response plan includes the facilitation of more effective communication between the Veteran and their provider, verbally and non-verbally. In both the outpatient and inpatient community settings, providers should be informally aware of the specific cultural needs related to Veterans. Even if Veterans have not seen combat, due to the prevalence of discrimination, sexual harassment/assault, there still may be underlying internal struggles that can lead to suicidal ideation and the act of suicide. The objective of effective communication will be to know what signs to look for, such as difficulty transitioning to civilian life, giving away belongings, isolation and/or lack of coping mechanisms (Bryan et al., 2012). With the use of resources and interprofessional collaboration, early recognition of behaviors can lead to the implementation of interventions with the goal of reducing the act of suicide through prevention techniques. To be culturally competent during this response plan will require patience, as the military influences expression of emotion to be minimal due to the cultural constrains (Lim, 2016). This, in addition with the Veteran’s personal cultural background, may cause internal conflict and make the situation more complex. 

After reading your textbook, consider the role of the DNP in education. Write an educational intervention plan that addresses your objectives. Using scholarly inquiry, discuss cost-effectiveness, feasibility, and the timeline for implementation of your plan.

To address the objectives listed above, the DNP as an educator can use current evidence-based research to teach Veteran’s self-regulation strategies to be used in stressful or overwhelming situations. This is relatively cost-effective, but is only feasible if the educator has the time to learn such strategies in order to reciprocate the knowledge. If the DNP is not directly involved in care, there can be coordination of other resources and delegation so that such interventions are still delivered to the Veteran. The DNP as an educator is versatile and evolving with the growth of the health care system. Even in quality-centered positions such as administration, the DNP will still have the responsibility to disseminate knowledge to facilitate the highest quality of care possible (Beeber et al., 2019). Another component to the intervention plan is to have an appropriate protocol in place if a Veteran does verbally or non-verbally give cues that they want to commit the act of suicide. This will include immediate contacting of the suicide prevention hotline, presentation to the emergency department and appropriate medication in place such an anxiolytics (with surveillance). Implementing these components of the interventional plan to prevent suicide in Veterans will have to start small and at a local level in order to evaluate effectiveness and accessibility of all necessary resources. If successful of preventing at least one Veteran from committing the act of suicide at the local level through the response and intervention plan as listed above, I find that to be effective in itself. 

References

Beeber, A. S., Palmer, C., Waldrop, J., Lynn, M. R., & Jones, C. B. (2019). The role of doctor of nursing practice-prepared nurses in practice settings. Nursing Outlook, 67(4), 354-364. 

https://doi.org/1016/j.outlook.2019.02.006  (Links to an external site.)

 (Links to an external site.)

Bryan, C., Jennings, K., Jobes, D., & Bradley, J. (2012). Understanding and preventing military suicide.  Archives of Suicide Research. 

https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2012.667321 (Links to an external site.)

 (Links to an external site.)
Lim, N. (2016). Cultural differences in emotion: differences in emotional arousal level between the East and the West. Integrative Medicine Research, 5(2). 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imr.2016.03.004  (Links to an external site.)

Toney-Butler, T., & Thayer, J. (2020). Nursing process. StatPearls. Retrieved March 02, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499937/