Healthcare issues Indiana University of Pennsylvania 3.4 Assignment: Issue Analysis – Synthesis

Getting Started

Opportunities for analyzing issues, problems, or situations are found in every discipline, workplace, and real-life situations. As a healthcare administrator, you will be called upon to think about, closely examine, and often write documents that analyze in order to understand complicated issues in our professions or lives.

Upon successful completion of the course material, you will be able to:

• Examine current issues in Healthcare Policy and Management.

Resources

• Textbook: Changing the U.S. Health Care System: Key Issues in Health Services Policy and Management
• File: Issue Analysis Outline

Background Information

Your thesis statement is centered on an inclusive sentence or sentences that provide an overview for the reader and predicts the content of your paper. If your issue is the use of prescription drug abuse, for example, your thesis should address the various stakeholders’ perspectives on this issue, and be clear, specific, and focused. You will want to synthesize the various components of this problem and analyze how the various articles you research are arguing the solution to the problem or why there is a problem.

Your beginning thesis is a ‘working thesis’. As you write your first draft of the paper, you will return to and change your thesis to include perhaps another perspective that you might have discovered through research. The thesis in your final paper will be that polished and finished statement or statements that are all-inclusive and synthesize the various sub-issues or perspectives covered in the paper.

The following questions/points may be helpful to you in developing your analysis.

1. What is the main issue?
2. Define any specific vocabulary needed to understand this issue.
3. Identify all possible positions on the issue. Which two are the key opposing sides?
4. Find all of the facts that support one position.
5. Find all of the facts that support the opposing position.
6. What beliefs/values are in conflict in this issue?
7. Take a position on the issue. Explain why you chose this position.
8. How could you influence others to support your position?
9. What steps did you use to analyze this issue?

Instructions

1. Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade.
2. This assignment is the third of four related to the final presentation and paper due in the final workshop. Additional information regarding the assignment is found in Assignments 5.3 and 6.3.
3. Review Chapters 1-10 in Changing the U.S. Health Care System: Key Issues in Health Services Policy and Management.
4. Consider the topic you submitted and researched in the prior workshops.
5. Create your working thesis for the issue analysis. The thesis is the statement or statements that are all-inclusive and synthesize the various sub-issues or perspectives covered in the paper.
6. Remember, you may come back to this section to update with feedback and findings from your research prior to submitting your final issue analysis. Please note: This will not change the grade for this assignment.
7. Include a title and reference page using APA citation format.
8. When you’ve completed your assignment, save a copy for yourself and submit a copy to your instructor using the Assignment submission page by the end of the workshop.