The Executive Master of Health Administration (EMHA) program in the College of Business at Florida Atlantic University is dedicated to preparing students from a range of disciplines to serve in leadership roles in the complex and ever evolving healthcare industry.
The EMHA program provides students with a strong business core curriculum with a focus on management within a healthcare setting. As part of their coursework requirements, graduate students taking Research Methods HSA 6707 are asked to complete a research proposal regarding a current health care topic. Within this assignment, they are instructed to create a research study question or hypothesis, develop goals and objectives, design a study approach, outline and provide details about how they would recruit and sample their study population encompassing data collection methods, qualitative and quantitative data analysis as well as a proposed timeline for completion and financial budget to implement their research study.
During the past two years, students have been encouraged to expand their course assignment and bring it live into their workplace. This exercise started with just one to two students each semester instituting individual components of their proposals. This number has recently grown to five to six students in each class who have implemented their entire research study as initially designed in their course assignment. Through the process of developing then implementing their research proposals, students learn how to directly apply the principles and procedures they learned in the classroom. Moreover, the course has assisted students in writing grant proposals to obtain the necessary funding to fully pursue their projects.
Student research study topics have addressed a wide variety of health issues and challenges faced by health care professionals. While implementing these research studies, numerous health education, diagnostic, clinical and health policy programs have been established including: increasing prostate cancer screening awareness for African American males; training nontraditional health care workers as care coordinators to provide patient education regarding diabetes prevention; implementing a primary nursing care delivery model to reduce patient length of stay; and using massage therapy to reduce selected stress-induced maternal morbidities and risk factors during pregnancy.
Building a study framework that can be transitioned into the work environment has also increased student satisfaction and allowed them to extend their ideas and initiatives beyond the classroom. Ongoing positive feedback from students has emphasized how helpful and rewarding it is to develop a graduate course project that ultimately impacts patient care and improves health outcomes in their work settings.
