Doctor of Nursing Practice

Program

Program Overview
The Doctor of Nursing Practice, Advanced Leadership in Clinical Practice is a terminal nursing degree program designed for the student who already has a Master of Science in Nursing degree. The program will offer online course work with related clinical inquiry at the DNP candidate’s healthcare institution.

Prerequisites for admission include a Master of Science degree in Nursing from an accredited institution, Applicants must have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher. Satisfactory completion of prerequisite graduate level coursework includes statistics and nursing research. The program can be completed in 20 or 32 months of study.

Philosophy: Nursing is the care of persons, families or populations who are experiencing or can be expected to experience variations in health; and the tending of the entire environment in which care occurs.

Mission: The nursing program mission flows from the College mission by preparing competent ethical nursing graduates at the baccalaureate and master’s level. The integration of knowledge from the liberal arts and sciences with professional education is designed to provide a student-centered, high-quality education in nursing, grounded in evidence-based theory, including the educational and clinical opportunities that prepare them to practice as professional nurses. It is expected that graduates will practice in a variety of settings as they serve persons from diverse backgrounds in need of health care, and form collaborative partnerships with professionals in other disciplines. In addition to a liberal education, the core components of the program in nursing are grounded in the Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice (2008), the Essentials of Master’s Education in Nursing (2011) and the Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Practice Nursing (2006) and include the competencies and knowledge essential to nursing practice, the values of the healing professions, and the development of the professional role of the nurse. The program prepares its graduates for lifelong learning and a spirit of inquiry.

Learning Outcomes

Integrate nursing science with knowledge form ethics, the biophysical, psychosocial, analytical, and organizational sciences as the basis for the highest level of practice;
Apply the scientific underpinnings of doctoral education as the conceptual foundation to reflect the complexity of nursing practice;
Develop advanced competencies for increasingly complex practice, faculty, and leadership roles
Develop and evaluate new practice approaches based on nursing theories and theories from other disciplines;
Function as a practice specialist/consultant in collaborative knowledge-generating research;
Demonstrate a final practice synthesis by developing a scholarly project.
Design, direct and evaluate quality improvement methodologies to promote safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable patient centered care;
Demonstrate advanced levels of clinical judgment, systems thinking, and accountability in designing, delivering, and evaluating evidence-based care to improve patient outcomes.
Engage in leadership to integrate and institutionalize evidence-based clinical prevention and population health services for all populations.
Use advance communication skills/processes to lead quality improvement and patient safety initiatives in health care systems;
Provide leadership in the evaluation and resolution of ethical and legal issues within health care systems related to the use of information technology, communication networks, and patient care technology.
Ensure accountability for quality of health care and patient safety for diverse populations;
Demonstrate sensitivity to diverse organizational cultures and populations including patients and providers.
Propose and evaluate effective strategies for managing the ethical dilemmas inherent in patient care, the health care organization, and research;
Develop and evaluate care delivery approaches that meet current and future needs of patient populations based on scientific findings in nursing and other clinical sciences as well as organizational, political, and economic sciences;
Engage proactively in the development and implementation of health policy at all levels;
Employ leadership skills with interprofessional teams to create change in health care and complex healthcare delivery systems;