Nursing

Chair: Debra Gates, DNP, NP-C

The Bachelor of Science in nursing curriculum is designed for registered nurse (RNs) who have an associate degree in nursing and wish to advance their careers in health care. Nurses with a B. S. degree are instrumental in planning and management, establishing standards of performance and participating in health care projects. A bachelor’s degree in nursing is required for acceptance into graduate-level nursing programs. The program extends beyond the clinical aspects of nursing to provide a background in patient education, health promotion, and technology integration. We’ll help you explore essential theories such as genetics, community health, epidemiology and health care across the lifespan. With a classroom-based format and experienced nursing faculty, you’ll enhance personal goals, increase earnings and improve job security. Throughout the program, you’ll be asked to experience a new nursing area of your choosing for the course titled Field Period^®, allowing you to practice in new ways with new skills of the baccalaureate prepared nurse. Upon graduation, students are prepared to specialize in a variety of areas, including community health, outpatient medicine, military health, school health, home care, acute care or specialty services.

The undergraduate nursing program consists of 34 credits. Students attend class one night a week for 4 hours. There is one week between each course that allows for the completion of the previous course and preparation for the next course. Additionally, one-week breaks are observed on the following holidays: Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

The nursing curriculum is based primarily on The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2008). This document highlights the core knowledge and skills necessary to address the needs of professional nursing practice in the 21st century. This core knowledge and the accompanying skill sets are incorporated into both the didactic and clinical coursework. Aligned with this AACN document are the criteria elaborated by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). Curriculum development is also guided by the ideas contained in three publications of the American Nurses Association (ANA): Standards of Clinical Nursing Practice (2010); Code for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (2008); and Nursing: A Social Policy Statement (2010).

Philosophy of Keuka College Division of Nursing Core Values

The core values represent the philosophical beliefs inherent in the Keuka College baccalaureate nursing program, “Nursing In Partnership with Communities.” These core values as program goals are described as follows:

• Prepares students to appreciate the broad spectrum of diversity across the human family and to value difference, interacting with each person, family, group, or community with non-judgmental openness, caring and empathy.
• Prepares students to practice professional nursing utilizing critical thinking, creativity, advanced communication skills, and skillful nursing interventions, grounded in nursing process and building on a broad foundation of knowledge from the physical and behavioral sciences and the humanities.
• Provides professional preparation and role socialization to promote the development of competent, humanistic oriented nurses capable of assuming the increasingly autonomous roles required by nurses.
• Encourages students to engage in experience-based practice, combining the “doing” of action with the “knowing” of theory to develop strategies to meet the emerging health care needs of an increasingly complex, global society.
• Facilitates interaction among students, teachers, and clients, to enhance learning and to assist students in recognizing the need for continuous lifelong personal growth as integral to building the foundation for advanced study in nursing.
• Prepares professional nurses to provide a socially significant service to clients within the rapidly changing socio-cultural environments that contribute to ongoing learning and development of both caregiver and service recipient and that are influenced by economic, technical, legal, political and ethical imperatives.
• Forges community partnerships across other health care agencies and care-givers in this rural community utilizing skills that can be applied in other settings and that are research-based, multidisciplinary, client centered, and cost effective.

Organizational Framework for the Keuka College Nursing Programs

Communication: Communication includes written, oral and computational modes with all client groups, peers, and the general public. Of prime importance in the communication process is the ability to understand and to be understood. The nurse attempts to gain access to the client’s perceptions, values, attitudes, and beliefs regarding his/her health status. Entering the client’s world, the nurse attempts to understand the client’s perceptions of his/her health status from the inside. This intervention strategy also includes an appreciation for diversity in terms of such factors as age, gender, ethnic, religious, and cultural values as well as level of education

Critical Thinking: Critical thinking is the ability to think constructively and creatively; to effectively identify and solve problems by analyzing, integrating and synthesizing information and experience; to critique outcomes and to value different ways of knowing. This is another important dimension of professional nursing practice. In client care situations, critical thinking is elaborated by the use of nursing process. First, assessment data is collected. Second, as data patterns emerge, nursing diagnoses are assigned. The nursing diagnoses drive the development of a plan, which is implemented, then evaluated. The last step involves use of the evaluation data to either continue or to revise the plan. This seemingly linear process as just described obscures the fact that critical thinking has many more sophisticated dimensions which nurses encounter as they engage in practice over time. For example, while the less experienced nurse may depend heavily on the use of nursing process, the more skilled clinician might quickly move to the problem cause without being deterred by considering data that, while important, are tangential to the major offending problem. As the ability to think critically advances, nurses also learn to question their “taken for granted” beliefs about how the world works. We assume clients will take their prescribed medications. In cases where they do not, nurses are accustomed to checking their assumptions that these clients had the ability and the willingness to follow their treatment regimes. Thinking critically involves this sort of reality checking.

Another dimension of critical thinking involves the transfer of knowledge and skills from one care context to another. For example, skills learned in the intensive care unit of a hospital are transferred to a home care situation where the client is receiving several IV medications, is on a mechanical ventilator, and is being nourished by tube feedings. The ability “to think on one’s feet” is an essential hallmark of professional nursing practice.

Experiential Learning: Experiential learning is a core value of both Keuka College and of the Division of Nursing. It is not only the basis of the unique Field Period at Keuka College, but it is also the mortar which binds together the bricks of learning from both inside and outside of the classroom. Experiential learning involves the practical application of theoretical material in a real-world learning situation. It is learning by doing wherein the theoretical elements become an integral part of the doing. In the broadest sense, all learning is experiential. However, actions that are informed by theory encourage a progressive learning process that leads to increased levels of expertise over time. By contrast, doing which is not informed by knowing may not lead to advancing expertise. These differences can be captured euphemistically as “having 20 years of experience versus having the same experience for 20 years.” One special type of experiential learning is service learning. In the service-learning model, both the nurse and the client learn through their mutual experience, and both parties benefit in varying ways. The client benefits directly through receiving care. Through personal introspection and reflection, the nurse learns about her/himself as the caregiver and about how to use and to perfect his/her talents and skills to be ever more successful in caring for clients.

Mission

Nursing courses, built on a liberal arts base, prepare the student with the nursing knowledge and skills necessary for nursing practice in a variety of community-based settings.

Vision

To model professional nursing practice, which focuses on health, and dignifies human differences

Core Values

The core values represent the philosophical beliefs inherent in the Keuka College baccalaureate nursing program, “Nursing In Partnership with Communities.”

Program outcomes:

Commitment to diversity - role modeling the integration of values which respect human differences and are marked by openness, caring, and empathy.

Communication ability - proficiency in written, oral and computational communication with all client groups, peers, and the general public.

Effective thinking ability - use of creativity and critical thinking to enhance client outcomes across a variety of health care settings.

The use of therapeutic nursing interventions – client focused actions based on scientific rationale and/or current accepted standards of practice that are executed to affectively and effectively benefit clients.

Commitment to experiential learning - the ability to integrate the “knowing” of theory and the “doing” of action to develop strategies for care-giving as well as growth in all areas of living.

Personal and professional development - the ability to articulate a plan for continued personal and professional lifelong growth that considers evolving social values in an increasingly complex global society.

Nursing applicants must have a current unrestricted registered professional nursing license (RN) and be employed in a nursing position.

Adult students in the nursing program must complete a Field Period (see experiential learning section for more details on the Field Period) as their capstone project. Other requirements:

• The need for additional credits for the degree completion is not to exceed 18 credit hours. For nursing, the maximum 18 credit hours refers to credit in addition to the prerequisite courses, BUS-320 (Statistics) and PHL-115 (Ethics).

Nursing applicants must hold the equivalent of an A.A.S. degree in nursing (60 transferable college credits) with a GPA of 2.5 or above. Conditional admission will be granted on a case-by-case basis. Conditional admission permits the student to recognize that additional time and money beyond the major coursework will be required for degree completion. The student agrees to return an educational plan that demonstrates how graduation requirements will be fulfilled to the Center for Professional Studies. The advisor and student will work out a plan to help meet those graduation requirements.

BS in Nursing Student Progression Policy

Students in the baccalaureate program for registered professional nurses must successfully complete the two prerequisite courses, Ethics and Statistics before beginning INS-301H.

Students must successfully complete INS-301H, the foundation course for the nursing program, before proceeding with the nursing courses.

In keeping with College policy, students may retake a failed course only once. Students who have two existing failures of nursing courses will be suspended from the nursing program (not the college) and must be approved for progression by the nursing faculty. Students reserve the right to appeal the suspension.

Nursing students must earn a grade of C or higher in all nursing courses and prerequisites.

The baccalaureate and masters nursing programs at Keuka College Division of Nursing are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). The CCNE address is:

Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education

One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 530

Washington, DC 20036

Telephone: (202) 887-6791

For more information, contact the Center for Professional Studies.