Capstone Paper Guidelines

Overview

The purpose of your capstone paper is to provide you an opportunity to complete your practicum and write a detailed report of what you learned during the practicum experience.

You need to provide the details of the work you have done or the project that you worked on
and include a critical analysis of what you learned. Any career in healthcare administration requires the following competencies:

Communication and Relationship Management: The ability to communicate clearly and concisely with internal and external customers, establish and maintain relationships, and facilitate constructive interactions with individuals and groups.

Leadership: The ability to inspire individual and organizational excellence, create and attain a shared vision and successfully manage change to attain the organization's strategic ends and successful performance.

Professionalism: The ability to align personal and organizational conduct with ethical and professional standards that include a responsibility to the patient and community, a service orientation, and a commitment to lifelong learning and improvement.

Knowledge of the Health Care Environment: The understanding of the healthcare system and the environment in which healthcare managers and providers function.

Business Skills: The ability to apply business principles, including systems thinking, to the healthcare environment.

These are the competencies we have been discussing throughout the entire semester. In your report, it is important that you incorporate the competencies and skills that were enhanced or learned as a result of the practicum. Integrating your knowledge of the course work in which you have participated can also be useful.

The ultimate purpose of your final paper is to showcase with sufficient detail the goals of your practicum/project and the extent to which they were met. Using your learning map and SMART GOALS activity, can help to provide you with the context in which you started. Your journal reflections will also help you to gather your thoughts on what you discovered as a result of the experience.

The specific guidelines for the final written report are below. A rubric will be added to the course shell which will show the expectation for your written assignment and the scores associated with each element to be included (grammar, spelling, proper citation of sources etc.).

Specific to your Capstone Paper

1. The purpose of the paper is to provide a narrative about the project or practicum or observership with sufficient detail to allow a reader to be able to accurately describe the goals of your work, situate it within the existing body of published literature and explain how the goals for project/practicum/observership relate to what you did and to your project outcome and conclusions.

2. In other words, your narrative must be clear, logical, and demonstrate alignment among the goals, methods (what you did), and outcomes (what you learned). In addition, it should reflect the integration and mastery of course content from the healthcare administration program.

3. The expectation is that the paper will be well written and follow the current APA formatting and citation guidelines.

4. Writing should be clear and organized, with a logical flow from one topic to the next.

Sentence structure should follow standard rules of grammar and punctuation.

a. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence, a body, and a conclusion.

b. Transitions between paragraphs should be fluid.

c. Use spell checker to help avoid spelling errors; however, this is not a substitute for careful proofreading.

d. Write in "active voice," whenever possible.

e. Use past and present tense, where appropriate

5. The main text of the capstone paper should be 10-12 pages, followed by references.

Please title the paper with your name, the course number, the semester and title Final

Capstone Paper.

MAIN AREAS TO INCLUDE:

In essence you will have an introduction discussing your career goals and aspirations.

You will then describe your practicum experience and what you learned. Where it was, your supervisor, what you did.

You are asked to incorporate the competencies and show mastery of course content in the field of healthcare administration since this was the experiential portion of your learning. This requires critical analysis of the experience.

Overview of skills that you honed and areas where you can improve.

Conclude with lessons learned and how you see the value of the internship adding to your educational experience and the attainment of your career goals. An analysis of the experience itself is also valid especially in the overarching context of healthcare administration.

Of course please do not hesitate to let me know if you have any questions.