DNP 835 Topic 7 case report: quality and safety
The concepts have to appear twice — once explaining the problem and once justifying the solution. Applying them only to the problem is the most common way this report loses marks.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 15, 2026
Quality and safety concepts, applied twice
Read the direction carefully, because the same concepts are required in two places. You apply quality or safety concepts to describe your understanding of the problem, and then apply one or more to the recommended intervention. Most drafts do the first well — framing a medication error through the Swiss cheese model, say — and then propose a solution that owes nothing to any concept at all. The second application is what the assignment is actually testing. If you explained the problem as latent system weaknesses aligning, your intervention should be a barrier or a forcing function rather than more education, because education targets individual performance and your own analysis said the problem was not individual. The second application also changes what evidence you need. The concepts justify why an intervention of that type makes sense; they do not show that yours works. Say which report you are drawing each concept from, since the two do different jobs.
The named sources matter too. To Err Is Human established preventable harm as a system property and shifted attention from individual blame; Crossing the Quality Chasm supplied the six aims — safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, patient-centred — that give you vocabulary for what dimension of quality your case is about. Say which aim, because a case about waiting times and a case about disparity are both quality problems in different dimensions and the interventions do not overlap. The report also requires you to identify a research instrument to evaluate the proposed solution and describe how it would be used, which is a genuine deliverable rather than a formality: name a real instrument with published psychometrics, and say what it would measure and when. Keep the case description de-identified and let the concepts, not the narrative, carry the report. Watch the word count against the section list: nine sections over three thousand words leaves under four hundred each.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Apply safety concepts to both diagnosis and intervention.
- 02Use the six aims to specify which dimension of quality is at issue.
- 03Select a research instrument appropriate to the proposed solution.
- 04Keep an intervention consistent with the analysis that produced it.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A case report of 2,500-3,000 words with the required sections.
- 02Quality or safety concepts applied to the problem description.
- 03The same or related concepts applied to the intervention.
- 04The dimension of quality named from the six aims.
- 05A named research instrument with its use described.
Problem through to instrument, with concepts throughout
Problem statement
Introduce the practice problem and its consequences.
The problem through quality and safety concepts
Apply named concepts to explain why the problem occurs.
Literature and the case
Give a brief synthesised review and the de-identified case.
The intervention, conceptually grounded
Propose a solution that follows from the conceptual analysis.
Evaluation instrument
Identify a research instrument and describe its use.
The two reports the brief names, and why
Recommended databases
- AHRQ and PSNet
- PubMed Central
- CINAHL
- Health and Psychosocial Instruments
Search sequence
- 1.Identify which of the six aims your case concerns before choosing an intervention.
- 2.Find the safety concept's primary source rather than a summary of it.
- 3.Search for an instrument validated for the outcome you intend to evaluate.
- 4.Check that your proposed intervention matches the level your analysis blamed.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Culture of Safety
AHRQ Patient Safety Network · 2024
The systems view of harm that To Err Is Human established, in a form that can be applied to a case.
- 02
Nursing and Patient Safety
AHRQ Patient Safety Network · 2024
Connects safety concepts to nursing practice problems and the interventions that follow from them.
- 03
Quality Improvement Methods (LEAN, PDSA, SIX SIGMA)
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2024
Improvement methods that give the intervention section a structure consistent with a systems diagnosis.
- 04
Validation of the instrument “Complexity of Nursing Care”-A mixed-methods study
Nursing Open · 2020
An instrument validation study, showing what published psychometrics look like for an evaluation tool.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Applying concepts to the problem and none to the solution.
- Proposing education as the intervention after a systems analysis.
- Leaving the quality dimension unnamed, so the intervention is unfocused.
- Naming an evaluation instrument without saying what it measures or when.
Submission checklist
- Do the concepts appear in both the problem and the intervention?
- Is your intervention consistent with your own diagnosis?
- Have you named which of the six aims the case concerns?
- Does the instrument have published psychometrics?
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.