BSN Curriculum

Professionalism and the inherent values of altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity, and social justice are fundamental to nursing. This course provides a foundation of concepts of professionalism to facilitate participation and engagement in professional or community-based organizations that advocate for quality and access to health care. Learning activities and assignments will focus on strategies for self assessment and self reflection of one’s values, moral integrity, and ability to act professionally at all times in complex health care delivery environments.

This course provides a foundation of principles of leadership based on contemporary needs for qualified nursing leaders who can function and manage in complex healthcare delivery environments. Learning activities and assignments will focus on strategies for self-assessment and self-reflection of one’s own leadership skills, knowledge, and attitudes that foster and promote nursing leadership in diverse healthcare delivery settings, and strategies for best practice in nursing leadership in the 21st century.

This course provides a foundation of evidence-based research principles to translate evidence into practice and how research informs professional nursing practice to improve patient safety and outcomes. Learning activities and assignments will focus on strategies for learning how to assess scientific merit of data-driven research, apply evidence-based practice in appropriate ways, monitor and evaluate the impact of evidence-based practice on informed nursing practice and outcomes of care as well as collaborate with interprofessional health care teams to improve patient safety and outcomes in a variety of healthcare delivery settings.

This course provides a foundation of information management and application of patient care technology to enhance and improve patient safety and outcomes by examining linkages between information management systems and patient care technologies that support and are linked to safe nursing practice. The course examines how technology is used to inform nursing practice and enhance patient safety by applying safeguards and decision making support tools embedded in the technologies. Students are exposed to effective clinical information systems (CIS) to document nursing care, examine the ethical components of protecting patient information, challenges with data security, regulatory requirements, confidentiality and rights to privacy as well as examine the role of the professional nurse in updating and garnering information management resources and applying them in patient care settings.

This course provides a foundation of U.S. healthcare policy, including financial and regulatory policies, as well as the nature and functioning of the U.S. healthcare delivery system. There is emphasis on policy processes at the organizational, local, state, national, and global levels. Learning activities and assignments focus on strategies for learning how to assess the role of the baccalaureate-prepared nurse in policy formation and reformation at all levels, demonstrating understanding of the political process at all levels, developing effective advocacy strategies for vulnerable populations, how to identify and influence key stakeholders in the policy process, the importance of effective communication of key healthcare issues, and how to influence change in the political process at all levels when there is social injustice.

This course provides a foundation of key concepts essential to promotion of effective interprofessional collaboration and communication for improving healthcare outcomes and patient safety. There is emphasis in the course on examination of the roles and perspectives of scope of practice for selected healthcare disciplines in intra-and interprofessional healthcare teams to improve healthcare outcomes and promote patient safety, and on effective strategies for advocacy and communication patterns in healthcare delivery settings as healthcare professionals develop trust and respect for all members of the healthcare team while recognizing unique differences and contributions of roles to patient safety and outcomes.

This course provides a foundation of key concepts essential to population-focused nursing, the aggregate, community or population as the unit of care. The focus of the course is on health promotion/disease prevention with emphasis on the professional nurse role in clinical prevention of disease and care of populations applying concepts of primary, secondary, and tertiary health promotion across the lifespan, identifying determinates of health, prioritizing primary prevention across the lifespan, actively identifying and targeting populations benefitting from evidence-based preventive initiatives and clinical preventive guidelines, assessment strategies for individuals and populations, applying evidence-based practice to health promotion/risk reduction, and being an advocate for vulnerable and disenfranchised populations without resources or a voice.

This course provides a foundation of key concepts essential to nursing care and professional nursing leadership in assessment, planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they must have as leaders of healthcare delivery focusing on improved system safety and effectiveness. There is particular emphasis on the nursing leadership role at the baccalaureate level for nursing to recognize, interrupt, evaluate, and correct healthcare errors and to implement safety principles and work with others to create a safe, caring environment for every healthcare delivery encounter as they provide care themselves, are acting in a leadership capacity, or are overseeing and delegating to other non-licensed assistive personnel. The course content focuses on identification, assessment, planning, design, and evaluation of evidence-based practice change to improve patient safety and outcomes.

This course provides a foundation of key concepts essential to care of an aging population in a complex society. Given the diverse health status of the aging population, professional nurses must be able to develop competencies to provide high quality care to aging adults and their families or significant others. Specifically the course focuses on increased diversity and complexity of an aging society and selected health care needs, life transitions of aging adults, normal body system changes occurring with the aging process, the professional nurse role in principled care provided to a vulnerable population, and the role of the professional nurse as advocate and caregiver promoting the concepts of quality end-of-life care for aging adults, including pain and symptom management honoring the autonomy and self- wish of the aging client.

This course provides a foundation for the baccalaureate nurse to have a solid understanding of the concepts of organizational and systems leadership, quality improvement, and safety that are essential to promoting high quality patient care impacting patient safety and outcomes. Professional nursing leadership skills are needed that emphasize ethical and critical decision-making, initiating and maintaining effective partnerships and working relationships, initiating and maintaining mutually respectful communication and collaboration skills within interprofessional healthcare teams, care coordination, delegation, and developing effective conflict resolution and consensus building strategies. Professional BSN nurses must be able to practice at the clinical microsystem level within ever changing, dynamic healthcare delivery settings and this course prepares the baccalaureate-prepared professional nurse with this knowledge, skills, and competencies to implement safety principles and work collaboratively with others on the interprofessional healthcare team to lead and participate in creating a safe, caring environment for healthcare delivery so every patient encounter is a safe, effective, and positive one through a 90-hour practicum in a selected healthcare organization.

Students will increase their competence in the critical reading of challenging college-level texts that engage significant ideas and in writing effective essays that advance a clear and meaningful thesis while demonstrating understanding of those texts. The second of the department’s three-course composition sequence, This course counts towards the fulfillment of the Essential Competencies element of the CLAS general education curriculum.

Introduces students to the process of library research and documented writing. Emphasis will be on the refinement of critical reading, thinking, and writing strategies applied to multiple sources and documented papers. This course counts towards the fulfillment of the Essential Competencies element of the CLAS general education curriculum.

Examines basic communication principles and strategies of public speaking. Various genres of oral communication are studied, with an emphasis on extemporaneous and impromptu forms of delivery. Students research, prepare, and deliver speeches that are then used as the focal point for the discussion of effective speaking and listening. A number of speeches are videotaped.

This course will enable students to use Microsoft Excel and Access to design and create complex applications to support effective decision making. Students will use Excel to design and create spreadsheets to support business analytics. Access will be used to understand, design, create, and utilize relational databases.