DQ 2 :Examine change theories in scholarly literature

Examine the literature briefly and then commit. The staged organisational models — Lewin's unfreeze, change and refreeze, and Kotter's eight steps — describe what a change agent does in sequence. Rogers' diffusion of innovations describes what happens among adopters and gives you the attributes that make a change spread: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability. Implementation science frameworks such as the consolidated framework for implementation research are the newer and more granular option, and they are worth mentioning because they treat context as a variable rather than as background. Choose one, and choose it for the shape of your project's obstacle rather than for familiarity, because a theory chosen for familiarity produces a paragraph that could have been written before the project existed. Name the obstacle before the theory, or the theory will be the one you already knew. Implementation frameworks treat context as a variable, which the staged models do not.

The DNP-prepared perspective is the qualifier that should shape everything after that. A DNP is not the person the change is happening to; they are the person accountable for it succeeding, which puts them in specific parts of any change model. In Lewin's terms that means owning the refreeze — writing the change into policy, orientation and the order set — because that is the stage a bedside champion cannot perform and the stage most projects skip. In Kotter's terms it means building the guiding coalition and holding the urgency when it fades in month four. In Rogers' terms it means designing for trialability and observability deliberately, so that the change is easy to try and its effects are visible without a report. Apply your chosen theory to one specific proposed change in your project, name the stage you expect to be hardest, and say what you would do differently at that stage because you hold the accountability rather than the assignment.