NURS-FPX4005 Assessment 1: Collaboration and Leadership Reflection
Capella University | BSN FlexPath | NURS-FPX4005 — Nursing Leadership: Focusing on People, Processes, and Organizations | 2025–2026
Assessment Overview
Create a reflection that addresses either an interprofessional collaboration you experienced or you observed from the Sentinel U — Interprofessional Collaboration simulation.
Leadership and collaboration are critical aspects of a nurse’s work. Effective leadership skills and interprofessional collaboration allow practitioners to share their perspectives in guiding patient care for the purposes of promoting optimal health and well-being. Reaching that standard requires a clear-eyed sense of who you are as a professional. Reflection is a key part of building both leadership skills and interprofessional relationships. It allows you to look critically at experiences and actions through specific lenses, consider potential reasons and causes of people’s actions and behaviors, and think about how to respond appropriately.
Nurses are often at the frontlines of interacting with various other disciplines and are considered full partners when approaching the healthcare of patients. That role only deepens the importance of well-developed leadership and collaborative practice.
Professional Context
This assessment is designed to help you become a reflective practitioner. By reflecting on your leadership style, along with the styles you have observed in others, you will learn to continually assess and improve your leadership and collaboration skills.
You may choose to reflect on a collaborative interprofessional experience in a current or former place of practice, or you may choose to complete the five short modules in the Sentinel U — Interprofessional Collaboration simulation and reflect on those experiences. Before you begin, complete the What Is Reflective Practice? activity in the course room. The five questions in that activity will help you practice self-reflection and build toward success on this assessment.
Course Competencies Addressed
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies through the assessment scoring guide criteria:
- Competency 2: Explain how interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to achieve desired patient and systems outcomes.
- Reflect on an interdisciplinary collaboration experience, noting ways in which it was successful and unsuccessful in achieving desired outcomes.
- Identify best-practice interdisciplinary collaboration strategies to help a team achieve its goals and work together more effectively, citing the work of at least one article in the presentation.
- Competency 4: Explain how change management theories and leadership strategies can enable interdisciplinary teams to achieve specific organizational goals.
- Describe your leadership style.
- Compare and contrast effective leadership with ineffective leadership.
- Identify best-practice leadership strategies from the literature that would improve an interdisciplinary team’s ability to achieve its goals, citing the work of at least one article in the presentation.
- Describe a leadership style to develop further in order to better support best-practice strategies.
- Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based communication strategies to impact patient, interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes.
- The full reference list is from relevant and evidence-based sources published within 5 years, exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format.
Assessment Instructions
This assessment is submitted in two parts. Both parts must be submitted together as a single submission.
Part 1 — One-Page Infographic Resume: Your Leadership Strengths
Briefly describe your leadership style and create a short, one-page infographic resume or poster that advertises your strengths as a current or emerging nurse leader. You may use an online design tool (e.g., Canva, Piktochart) or use the graphics and formatting capabilities within Microsoft Word to build your infographic.
Your infographic resume should include, at minimum:
- A brief statement or tagline describing your overall leadership approach.
- Bullet points or visual sections that highlight two to four key leadership and collaboration strengths.
- A clear, professional visual layout that would be suitable for a workplace or academic audience.
An example infographic resume is available as a PDF in the course room under Assessment 1 resources. Refer to it for formatting guidance, not as a template to replicate.
Part 2 — Two-Page Written Reflection: Leadership and Collaboration in Practice
Write a two-page double-spaced reflection that addresses all of the following required criteria. Apply a simplified gap-analysis approach where useful:
- What happened?
- What went well?
- What did not go well?
- What should have happened?
Required Criterion 1 — Reflect on an Interdisciplinary Collaboration Experience
- Describe a specific interprofessional collaboration experience from your personal nursing practice. If you do not have a suitable example from your own practice, complete the five short modules in the Sentinel U — Interprofessional Collaboration simulation and reflect on that experience instead.
- Note the ways in which the collaboration was successful in achieving desired patient or systems outcomes.
- Note the ways in which the collaboration was unsuccessful or fell short of desired outcomes.
- Explain how effective leadership — or a lack of effective leadership — played a role in each of these outcomes.
Required Criterion 2 — Compare and Contrast Effective and Ineffective Leadership
- Draw on your own observations and the collaboration experience described above to compare and contrast what effective leadership looks like with what ineffective leadership looks like in an interprofessional healthcare setting.
- Be specific about behaviors, communication patterns, decision-making approaches, or other observable leadership characteristics. Generic descriptions without concrete examples will not meet the Proficient threshold.
- Remember that leadership can be demonstrated by those who are not in official or formal leadership positions — your reflection should reflect this understanding.
Required Criterion 3 — Identify Best-Practice Leadership Strategies from the Literature
- Given what you have described about effective leadership and what effective collaboration looks like, identify at least one best-practice leadership strategy drawn from the peer-reviewed literature that would improve an interdisciplinary team’s ability to achieve its goals.
- Cite at least one scholarly or professional article to support the leadership strategy you identify. The source must be published within the past five years.
- Explain why this strategy is relevant to the specific collaboration experience or gap you described and how it would address the issues identified.
Required Criterion 4 — Identify Best-Practice Interdisciplinary Collaboration Strategies from the Literature
- Separately from the leadership strategy above, identify at least one best-practice interdisciplinary collaboration strategy drawn from the peer-reviewed literature that would help the team work together more effectively and achieve its goals.
- Cite at least one scholarly or professional article to support the collaboration strategy you identify. The source must be published within the past five years.
- Explain how this collaboration strategy applies specifically to the experience you described and the desired outcomes you want to achieve.
Required Criterion 5 — Describe a Leadership Style to Develop Further
- Based on the best-practice strategies you identified in Criteria 3 and 4, identify the specific leadership style or competency you most need to develop further in order to put those strategies into practice.
- Describe how you would develop that style or competency. Be specific: name a method, resource, experience, or structured approach (for example, mentorship, continuing education, simulation, peer feedback, or a professional development plan).
Additional Requirements
- Part 1 length: One page — infographic resume consisting of bullet points, brief descriptors, and visual elements. No running text paragraphs required.
- Part 2 length: Two pages double-spaced, not including the APA reference page.
- Font and font size (Part 2): Times New Roman, 12 point.
- Margins: 1 inch on all sides.
- References: Cite at least three professional or scholarly sources of evidence to support the assertions and proposals you make. Include additional properly cited references as necessary.
- APA reference page: Submit a correctly formatted APA 7th edition reference page showing all sources used to develop the content — not only those directly cited in-text. References must be from sources published within the past five years. Nearly flawless adherence to APA format is required for a Distinguished rating on Criterion 5.
- Source currency: All references must be published within 5 years of the submission date.
- Submission: Submit both Part 1 and Part 2 together as a single file or document set through the Assessment 1 activity link in the course room. Two attempts are available for this assessment.
Assessment Scoring Guide (Rubric)
This assessment is scored on a four-level scale: Distinguished | Proficient | Basic | Non-Performance. A rating of Proficient or above on all criteria is required to demonstrate competency in Capella’s FlexPath model.
| Criterion | Distinguished | Proficient | Basic | Non-Performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Criterion 1: Reflect on an interdisciplinary collaboration experience, noting ways it was successful and unsuccessful in achieving desired outcomes. (Competency 2) | Reflects on an interdisciplinary collaboration experience with exceptional depth and candor, identifying specific successes and failures in achieving desired patient or systems outcomes. Clearly connects each outcome to leadership behavior, with nuanced analysis that goes beyond surface-level description. Includes a well-reasoned gap analysis that informs the rest of the reflection. | Reflects on an interdisciplinary collaboration experience, noting specific ways in which it was successful and unsuccessful in achieving desired outcomes. Explains how effective leadership — or a lack of it — played a role in those outcomes. Experience drawn from personal practice or Sentinel U simulation. | Reflects on a collaboration experience but the description is vague, incomplete, or fails to connect outcomes to leadership. Either success or failure is not addressed, or the role of leadership is not discussed. | Does not reflect on an interdisciplinary collaboration experience or does not address outcomes. |
| Criterion 2: Compare and contrast effective leadership with ineffective leadership. (Competency 4) | Compares and contrasts effective and ineffective leadership with precision and insight, using specific observable behaviors drawn from the experience described. Recognizes that leadership operates at both formal and informal levels, and demonstrates awareness of how different leadership styles influence interprofessional team dynamics and patient outcomes. | Compares and contrasts effective leadership with ineffective leadership using specific examples observed in others. Clearly describes what works and what does not work in terms of leadership behaviors, communication, or decision-making in an interprofessional setting. | Compares or describes effective and ineffective leadership but does not clearly contrast both, or provides only generic descriptions without grounding them in specific observed behaviors or examples from the collaboration experience. | Does not compare and contrast effective leadership with ineffective leadership. |
| Criterion 3: Identify best-practice leadership strategies from the literature that would improve an interdisciplinary team’s ability to achieve its goals, citing at least one article. (Competency 4) | Identifies best-practice leadership strategies with critical analysis, connecting them explicitly and convincingly to the specific team challenges described. Cites at least one high-quality, current scholarly source, evaluates its relevance and credibility, and articulates a clear rationale for why the strategy applies to the identified gap. | Identifies at least one best-practice leadership strategy from the peer-reviewed literature that would improve an interdisciplinary team’s ability to achieve its goals. Cites at least one scholarly or professional article published within the past five years. Explains why the strategy is relevant to the experience described. | Identifies a leadership strategy but it is not drawn from scholarly or professional literature, or the cited source is not recent, or the connection between the strategy and the experience described is not clearly made. | Does not identify best-practice leadership strategies from the literature or does not cite any source. |
| Criterion 4: Identify best-practice interdisciplinary collaboration strategies from the literature that would improve a team’s ability to achieve its goals, citing at least one article. (Competency 2) | Identifies best-practice interdisciplinary collaboration strategies with substantial evidence-based depth, drawing meaningfully on at least one high-quality, current peer-reviewed article. Explains precisely how the strategy maps onto the specific collaboration challenges identified in the reflection and why it would improve team function and patient outcomes. | Identifies at least one best-practice interdisciplinary collaboration strategy from the peer-reviewed literature that would help the team work together more effectively and achieve its goals. Cites at least one scholarly or professional article published within the past five years. Explains how the strategy applies to the experience described. | Identifies a collaboration strategy but it is not from scholarly literature, or the source is not current, or the reflection does not clearly explain how the strategy would address the collaboration gaps identified. | Does not identify best-practice interdisciplinary collaboration strategies from the literature or does not cite any source. |
| Criterion 5: Describe a leadership style to develop further to better support best-practice strategies. (Competency 4) | Describes a specific leadership style or competency to develop with exceptional self-awareness and precision. Articulates a concrete, realistic, and detailed plan for developing that style — including specific methods, timelines, or resources — and connects the development need directly to the best-practice strategies identified in the reflection. | Describes a specific leadership style to develop further in order to better support the best-practice strategies identified. Explains how development in that area would help implement the strategies and what concrete steps would be taken to develop the style. | Describes a leadership style to develop but does so vaguely, without connecting it clearly to the best-practice strategies identified, or without specifying how development would occur. | Does not describe a leadership style to develop to better support best-practice strategies. |
| Criterion 6: Full reference list from relevant, evidence-based sources published within 5 years, exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format. (Competency 5) | Reference list is complete, includes all sources used to develop the content, and represents high-quality scholarly or professional evidence published within 5 years. APA 7th edition formatting is essentially error-free throughout — author names, publication dates, titles, journal names, volume, issue, page numbers, and DOIs are all correctly formatted. | Reference list includes all sources cited or used to develop the content. Sources are current (published within 5 years), professional or scholarly, and formatted in APA 7th edition with only minor and infrequent errors that do not impede comprehension of the citation. | Reference list is present but incomplete, includes sources that are not current or not scholarly, or contains multiple APA formatting errors that indicate a lack of familiarity with APA style. | Does not include a reference list, or the reference list contains only non-scholarly sources, or APA formatting is absent. |
Collaboration and Leadership Reflection
Interprofessional collaboration in nursing is not a soft skill that operates in the background of patient care; it is a structural determinant of patient safety, team function, and institutional outcomes, and it depends heavily on the presence of nurses who can lead from any position on the care team. During a recent collaboration with a physician, respiratory therapist, and social worker in the care of a patient experiencing acute COPD exacerbation, communication gaps surrounding post-discharge oxygen setup revealed how quickly well-intentioned interdisciplinary work can fracture along role boundaries when no one takes informal ownership of coordination. The charge nurse who stepped into that gap — without formal authority but with clear purpose — demonstrated what transformational leadership looks like in practice: she articulated a shared goal, redistributed tasks transparently, and created enough psychological safety that other team members flagged concerns before they became errors. Ystaas et al. (2023) found in a systematic review that transformational leadership in nursing is consistently associated with improved patient outcomes, higher staff satisfaction, and stronger interdisciplinary cohesion, reinforcing that leadership competency — not job title — is the variable that matters most in high-stakes team environments. Structured communication tools such as SBAR create a shared language across disciplines that reduces the reliance on assumed understanding, and their adoption as a team standard is one of the most evidence-supported strategies for closing the gap between a team’s collaborative intention and its collaborative execution.
Scholarly References
The following peer-reviewed sources are relevant to the content of this assessment. All were published within the past five years. Use the Capella Library (CINAHL, PubMed, APA PsycINFO) to supplement this list with additional sources specific to your reflection topic and chosen leadership strategy.
Mekonnen, M. & Bayissa, Z. (2023). The effect of transformational and transactional leadership styles on organizational readiness for change among health professionals. SAGE Open Nursing, 9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10336755/
Samardzic, M., Doekhie, K. D. & Wijngaarden, J. D. H. (2020). Interventions to improve team effectiveness within health care: A systematic review of the past decade. Human Resources for Health, 18(1), 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-019-0411-3
Shen, Q. & Tucker, S. (2024). Fostering leadership development and growth of nurse leaders: Experiences from Midwest Nursing Research Society Leadership Academy. Nursing Outlook, 72(6), 102293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2024.102293
Ystaas, L. M. K., Nikitara, M., Ghobrial, S., Latzourakis, E., Polychronis, G. & Constantinou, C. S. (2023). The impact of transformational leadership in the nursing work environment and patients’ outcomes: A systematic review. Nursing Reports, 13(3), 1271–1290. https://doi.org/10.3390/nursrep13030108
Zajac, S., Woods, A., Tannenbaum, S., Salas, E. & Holladay, C. L. (2021). Overcoming challenges to teamwork in healthcare: A team effectiveness framework and evidence-based guidance. Frontiers in Communication, 6, 606445. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.606445
