Date of Conferral
8-11-2026
Date of Award
August 2026
Degree
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
School
Nursing
Advisor
Susan Huehn
Abstract
This staff education quality improvement project at Clinic P targeted the clinical problem of depression under-diagnosis, evidenced by less than 60% of patients completing the patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) before the initiative. Depression under-diagnosis, significantly caused by provider PHQ-9 screening competency deficits that need to be addressed through staff education, is associated with adverse patient health outcomes, in turn generating negative implications for providers and wider society. The problem compromises the quality of nursing care because it limits nurses' ability to intervene and deliver timely and effective care to patients with depression. Thus, at Clinic P, this initiative asked how staff education impacts provider PHQ-9 screening competency and administration rate with the purpose of improving screening process and outcomes based on the pre-post intervention evaluation of provider competency and screening assessment rate outcomes. Assessing competency using a 4-item Perceived Competency Scale and the PHQ-9 completion rate based on chart review, and using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and a chi-square test, respectively, at the 0.05 statistical significance level; the findings revealed statistically significant post-interventional changes on both variables. The conclusion was that staff education was effective, thus informing the recommendation that the clinical site should institutionalize the PHQ-9 staff education program in standard organizational policy and practice. The initiative can improve the standard of nurse-led depression screening, thereby improving care-related and patient outcomes, and addressing the societal challenge posed by the population health burdens of undiagnosed depression, especially for disparately impacted racial and ethnic minorities and other vulnerable groups, thereby strengthening healthcare equity.
Recommended Citation
Chukwu, Chibugo, "Staff Education to Enhance PHQ-9 Depression Screening Compliance" (2026). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies. 20560.
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/20560
