A problem statement is the paragraph that justifies your whole project. It names a real practice problem, shows how large it is, states what is not yet known or done, and hands off to your purpose. This guide shows how to build one that a committee can test.
A problem statement is the smallest defensible argument in a scholarly project. In one to three paragraphs it tells the reader what is going wrong or missing in practice, for whom, how you know, and why it has not already been solved. Every later section, from the aim to the measures, has to trace back to it. If a committee member cannot say what your project is fixing after reading it, the rest of the document will be judged against a blurred target.
A problem is not a topic and it is not a solution. "Hypertension in older adults" is a topic. "We need an education program" is a solution that assumes the problem. The problem is a gap between what practice is and what evidence, standards or patient needs say it should be, in one specific setting.
Most strong statements read in that order, but your program's template wins if it differs.
Graduate nursing work usually rests on one of two gaps, and it helps to say which. A practice gap is the distance between current local performance and a guideline, benchmark or target. An evidence gap is a question the literature has not answered for your population, setting or intervention. DNP projects lean on a practice gap and use the literature to show that a workable solution exists. Theses and dissertations lean more often on an evidence gap.
Cite the source of every figure, including internal ones, and use them only with organizational permission and no identifiers. Avoid "there is limited research" unless you say what produced that conclusion. A sentence naming the databases searched and the years covered is far more persuasive. National context can come from public sources such as AHRQ.
Share your topic, setting and any local data. The ProNursingScholars team can help you frame the problem and gap. Details stay confidential.
Once the statement is drafted, place your aim beside it. Every measure in the aim should correspond to a piece of the problem, and every piece of the problem should be something the project could plausibly move. If the statement describes a system-wide staffing issue and the aim measures one education session, the two do not match. Fix the mismatch here, before methods are written. The aims and objectives guide shows how to do the alignment, and the DNP project proposal help page describes where the statement sits in a full proposal.
Fictional scenario: a community health center that serves adults with type 2 diabetes. All figures are invented for illustration.
| Weak | Strong |
|---|---|
| Diabetes is a major problem and many patients struggle to manage it. Nurses should teach patients more. This project will improve diabetes education. | In an internal chart audit of one community health center, 31% of adults with type 2 diabetes had a hemoglobin A1c above 9.0% at their last two visits, and only 12% had documented self-management education in the past year. Published standards recommend such education at diagnosis and at set points afterward, yet the clinic has no referral pathway or named owner for it. Patients at highest risk are therefore least likely to be reached. A search of CINAHL and PubMed for 2015 to 2025 found no evaluation of a nurse-led pathway in a clinic serving a mostly Spanish-speaking population. This project will test one. |
The strong version has a population, a local number and its source, a consequence, a named gap and a bridge to purpose. The weak version could be pasted into almost any project, which is exactly the problem.
Usually one to three paragraphs, or a short section of a page or two in a proposal. Follow your program's template and word limits.
No. The problem says what is wrong and why it matters. The purpose says what you will do about it. They should be adjacent and consistent, not identical.
Say so, and propose how you will obtain it, such as a baseline audit with the site's approval. A framed problem with a plan to size it is better than an invented figure.
The statement shows that a gap exists; the synthesis shows what is known. See the synthesis matrix guide and the DNP literature synthesis help page.