D160: Nursing Leadership and Management Field Experience

D160 is where the healthcare improvement project (HIP) leaves the page. Students in WGU's MSN Leadership and Management program put their plans into action in a real healthcare setting.

WGU's program guide describes the course as implementing the project planned in earlier courses. Students develop and deliver a training plan for staff, managers and leaders, carry out their communication plan, manage implementation using organizational standards, and lead stakeholder meetings to report status and solve problems.

This is a leadership test as much as a writing one. Things rarely go exactly to plan, and the course rewards students who respond to risks openly and professionally.

The Four D160 Competencies

• Kick-off: using effective communication and relationship building to launch the project.
• Training: implementing the training plan for staff, managers and leaders.
• Managing implementation: applying organizational standards and practices to solve risks as they emerge.
• Status meetings: leading scheduled meetings with internal and external stakeholders.

Implementation Skills Explained

The Kick-off Meeting

A kick-off sets the tone. It restates the problem, the goal, roles, the timeline and how people can raise concerns. A short agenda and clear follow-up notes show the communication competency in action.

Training That Changes Practice

Effective training is brief, practical and repeated. Combine a short session with job aids at the point of care and champions who answer questions on each shift.

Risk and Issue Management

A risk is something that might happen; an issue is something that has. Keep a simple log with the problem, its impact, the owner and the action. Reporting it honestly at status meetings is part of the competency.

Documenting the Field Experience

Your course sets the exact deliverables; follow its instructions and your organization's rules on what can be shared.

Delivering the Training Plan

One D160 competency is implementing the training plan for staff, managers or leaders. Training is often where a project wins or loses frontline support, so plan it around how staff actually work.

• Offer short sessions at shift change or several times a day so night staff are included.
• Use super-users or champions on each shift to answer questions afterwards.
• Check understanding with a quick return demonstration or short quiz.
• Keep attendance records; they become evidence for your documentation.

Record what you adjusted after early sessions. Adapting training in response to feedback is good implementation practice and gives you material for reflection.

Where Students Get Stuck

• Delays in approvals. Build buffer time and keep your sponsor informed.
• Staff resistance. Listen, adjust where reasonable and use champions.
• Weak records. Write notes straight after meetings; reconstructing them later is hard.
• Hiding problems. Evaluators value honest risk management over a story where nothing went wrong.

Leading Status Meetings

The fourth D160 competency is leading scheduled meetings with internal and external stakeholders to report on implementation. Short, regular meetings with a consistent agenda keep stakeholders informed and surface problems early.

A practical agenda covers progress against the timeline, early data on your measures, risks and issues, decisions needed and next steps. Send brief minutes afterwards with owners and dates for each action. Keep copies, because meeting records also serve as evidence of the communication and relationship-building the course assesses.

Study Tips for D160

• Set a fixed rhythm for status meetings and keep them short.
• Collect baseline data before launch so D161 can show change.
• Keep a reflective log of leadership lessons; the capstone asks for lessons learned in every phase.
• Thank staff publicly; recognition supports engagement.

How We Help with D160

We help with the written parts: structuring meeting notes and status reports, preparing training materials as models, and editing your implementation write-up. Send the task, rubric and your notes with identifiers removed. Our nursing leadership paper guide covers related writing.

GradeEssays is independent of Western Governors University. The field experience itself, leading meetings and training staff, is yours to do; we only provide reference support for documentation, which you finalize and submit under WGU's academic integrity rules.