RN to Master of Science in Nursing Informatics

The undergraduate general education component requires 61 credits.

Information Literacy: 1 credit

Written English Requirement: 6 credits

Humanities:

• Humanities: 9 credits
• Ethics Core: 3 credits

Social Sciences:

• Social Sciences/History: 9 credits
• Psychology Core Requirement: 3 credits
• Sociology Core Requirement: 3 credits

Natural Sciences/Mathematics:

• Human Anatomy and Physiology Core: 4 credits
• Microbiology Core: 3 credits
• Sciences Supportive of Nursing Core: 2 credits
• Statistics Core: 3 credits
• Natural Sciences/Mathematics: 3 credits

Arts and Sciences Electives: 12 credits

Nursing Credit for Prior Learning and Successful Completion of NCLEX-RN: 30 Credits

Core Courses: 29 Credits

Community Health Nursing: Caring for the Public’s Health
This course integrates evidence, theory, standards, and knowledge from nursing, public health, and other disciplines to guide population-focused nursing practice. Importance is placed on the application of the core functions of public health: assessment, policy development, and the assurance of available and necessary health services for diverse populations. Emphasis is placed in identifying determinants of health, advocating for vulnerable populations, prioritizing primary prevention, and utilizing available resources to improve the health of populations. Population-focused nursing involves assessing the health care needs of a specific population and making health care decisions for the population as a whole rather than for individuals. This course includes practice experiences in the community.

Leadership and Management in Nursing
This course focuses on the application of leadership and management concepts and theories; inter-professional communication and collaboration; and evidence-based strategies and inquiry within health care organizations. Team building, quality improvement, patient and staff safety, and fiscal management are addressed within the role of baccalaureate-prepared nurse leader and manager across a variety of health care settings.

Transformational Nursing: Innovation, Inquiry, and Scholarship
This course explores how nursing may be transformed. The ways of knowing set a foundation for knowledge acquisition and competencies for master’s-prepared nurses. The need for nurses to be innovators, through the application of inquiry and scholarship, are discussed in relation to such topics as leadership, change, and power. Theory-based and scientific competencies are examined as they relate to specializations in nursing. A spirit of inquiry, combined with creativity, curiosity, and the translation of evidence, is explored through critical conversations that support interprofessional collaboration and professional nursing roles in a dynamic healthcare environment.

Theoretical Foundations of Nursing Practice
Theoretical Foundations of Nursing Practice focuses on the exploration of nursing knowledge development to include philosophy, theories, models, and concepts that have been designed to guide nursing practice. It provides approaches to analyze and critique a variety of theories in nursing and related fields.

Advanced Physical Assessment
This course focuses on the advanced comprehensive assessment of individuals. It builds on the students’ knowledge and skills and provides a foundation for the advanced practice nurse to evaluate the health of individuals and provide health promotion interventions. The interactions of developmental, biopsychosocial, and socio-cultural contexts resulting in health effects for individuals provide the structure of the course. Students obtain the practice skills necessary for advanced communication (i.e., clinical interviewing, focused history taking), biopsychosocial and physical assessment, critical diagnostic reasoning, differential diagnosis, and clinical decision-making through course readings, dialog, discussions, videos, simulations, and practical examinations. This course includes 45 hours of clinical experience.

Research and Evidence-Based Practice
Research and Evidenced-Based Practice focuses on the research process and the analysis and evaluation of research to integrate the best evidence into practice. Emphasis is on the identification of generic and discipline-specific health care issues, synthesis of client care and research initiatives to inform evidence, and translation of research to support and inform practice innovations.

Policy, Ethics, and Population Health
This course examines public policy, political ideology, and ethics as they shape health policy across populations. Political ideology, social and health policy are considered within the lens of population based health and reducing health disparities. The role of the master’s-prepared nurse is to lead and advocate within the public policy arena is explored and discussed. Contemporary issues in health policy viewed from the perspective of ethics and the social and material determinants of health are considered. A primary focus of the course is consideration and development of the knowledge and skills that the master’s-prepared nurse needs as a change agent in health policy.

Nursing Capstone
This capstone course focuses on integration and synthesis of knowledge, skills, and competencies from nursing, other disciplines, and the arts and sciences. Application of specific concepts and theories, such as communication, critical thinking, and leadership, enables students to transform theory to practice within health care systems. This course includes practice experiences.

This component requires 6 credits.

Epidemiology
The science of epidemiology is essential in planning disease prevention interventions, developing an understanding of disease etiology, identifying trends in morbidity and mortality, and providing a basis for the development of public health policy. This course will serve as an introduction to the core concepts and methods of epidemiology. Students will explore factors related to the etiology and distribution of illness in populations including exposure, transmission, and prevention. Methodologies used in surveillance techniques will also be introduced and explored.

Graduate Elective
To meet the required number of program credits, 3 graduate-level elective credits must be taken. These may be completed within the graduate program or transferred from other graduate programs if they are deemed eligible for credit.

The nursing informatics component consists of three online courses totaling 10 credits.

Data, Information, and Knowledge

The course focuses on the nature of data, the concepts of information and knowledge, and the principles of relational databases, systems operations, and information systems.

System Life Cycle

This course focuses on a structured approach to the selection and implementation of an information system. This structured approach is called the information system development life cycle and the course incorporates the five phases of the life cycle: planning, analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation.

Management Information for Decision Support

This course focuses on the identification, acquisition, analysis, interpretation, and application of data, databases, and decision-making strategies for health care. It emphasizes decision support systems concepts, methodologies, and technologies, and includes content on model management, knowledge management, and strategies to consider when selecting decision-support systems.

The Nursing Informatics Capstone: 6 Credits

This culminating experience provides learners with an opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired throughout the program of study, focusing on the competencies of the graduate-level nurse. This course consists of several integrated components: a 247.5-hour practice experience, discussion, reflective journal, scholarly paper, and project presentation.

Bachelor’s Student Learning Program Outcomes

• Promote holistic patient-centered care and population health supporting values, culture, right to self-fulfillment, and quality care outcomes.
• Integrate evidence, nursing theory, and knowledge from other disciplines to guide nursing practice.
• Formulate decisions based on nursing judgment and collaboration with the interprofessional team to achieve quality patient outcomes.
• Incorporate professional core values, guidelines, standards of practice, and lifelong learning as a basis for professional nursing practice.
• Apply principles of leadership to advocate for the unique role of the nursing profession within the health care system.
• Engage in the spirit of inquiry to propose solutions that support nursing excellence.

Master’s Student Learning Program Outcomes

• Function as a leader and change agent to promote holistic patient-centered care and population health.
• Translate evidence to develop health care practices in a culturally and ethnically diverse global society.
• Synthesize theoretical and empirical knowledge from nursing and other disciplines that are essential for nursing judgment and practice.
• Integrate specialty practice knowledge to enhance interprofessional collaboration, inform decisions, and improve health outcomes.
• Exemplify professional values and standards, best practices, and the commitment to lifelong learning in the role of the master’s-prepared nurse.
• Implement the role of master’s-prepared nurse as part of the interprofessional team.
• Integrate scholarship, a spirit of inquiry, and innovation to support nursing excellence.

Surveys are administered to our nursing program students upon graduation and at one year post-graduation. The survey results are available here.