Nursing student insight: DNP at University of Michigan

Meet Raja Issa, MSN, RN, CPHQ, CPPS, HACP

• Doctor of nursing practice (DNP) student at the University of Michigan School of Nursing (UMSN).
• Works full-time as a Staff Specialist Healthcare at Michigan Medicine.
• Area of focus is patient safety and alarm fatigue.
• Will graduate in May 2018.

Why he pursued a DNP

“Throughout my career as a nurse I found myself asking why. Why are we doing this practice this way? I noticed that in some cases is was evidence based and in other cases there wasn’t a real good explanation. I realized that earning my DNP would allow me to answer some of the nursing practice questions I had, while bringing new knowledge that will help other nurses provide the best care possible to their patients. I see the DNP as the umbrella that will help you lead in every single aspect of nursing.”

Working and going to school

“When I started the program three years ago, I started working in the nursing quality department at Michigan Medicine as a clinical information analyst. As it turned out, my supervisor, Leah Shever, was also a U-M School of Nursing faculty member. She is well-known for her translational and evidence-based science work and I learned a lot from working with her.

I got more out of my DNP education because I was able to take what I was learning in the classroom to my job in most cases. I think it helped me in my career, as I was promoted recently to lead Regulatory Readiness for Michigan Medicine’s 5,500 nurses. I don’t think I’d be in my current job if it wasn’t so closely related to what I’m studying as part of my DNP degree work.”

Developing his expertise: Patient safety and alarm fatigue         

“My DNP project is titled, ‘Enhancing patient safety through decreasing non-actionable cardiac telemetry alarms and alarm fatigue’. My number one focus is helping nurses and other healthcare professionals avoid incidents that can harm patients. The DNP degree teaches you to think at a system level, so it has really helped me approach patient safety problems from a system-wide perspective. It has taught me how to look at all the data available—electronic health records, alarm fatigue, nurses' perceptions—and develop processes that improve patient safety all within the context of the current regulatory environment.”

Going straight to the source: Faculty knowledge

“While I was working as a nurse in the emergency room at Michigan Medicine, I read a lot of research papers on nursing practice and one of them was written by Dr. Marita Titler, who was nationally-renowned for her work in evidence-based practice nursing and translation/implementation science. She also just happened to be at professor right down the street at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, so that got me interested in earning a DNP at U-M because I would be learning from the people who pioneered some of the evidence-based practices that have led to so many improvements in patient care.”

Welcoming community

“As someone who immigrated to the United States from Lebanon, I really value the diversity of the people at the University of Michigan. People come from all over the world to be here and learn together with the ultimate goal of making things better for patients. When you’re coming from a different culture the fear of the unknown is real. In my classes we have people from a lot of different cultures and the instructors do a great job of listening to everyone’s point of view and bringing all of it together into a cohesive and productive discussion. It’s really inspiring to me to see all these different people come to Michigan and work together for the betterment of humanity.”