- Philosophy
- Nursing Process
- Communication
- Teaching and Learning
- Leadership
- Caring
- Research
- Critical Thinking
Philosophy
The philosophy of the Nursing Program flows from the Mission of Norwich University and supports the University's ideals that are dedicated to learning, teamwork, leadership, creativity, and critical thinking. The University further strives to provide for the educational needs of both traditional and nontraditional students through lifelong learning opportunities in a variety of educational modes.
The Nursing Program is non-discriminatory and admits students regardless of age, sex, nationality, race, or sexual preference. The purpose of the Nursing Program is to develop and prepare individuals as nurse generalists for professional nursing roles and to provide educational preparation for graduate study in nursing. The program provides a foundation for continuing personal and professional development and prepares a competent beginning practitioner of nursing who is prepared to assume increasing responsibility and leadership providing fiscally responsible care while improving the quality of care.
The nursing faculty believes that nursing theories and knowledge, and the theories and knowledge from the health and behavioral sciences contribute collectively to promote, protect, and restore health for individuals, families, groups, and communities. This practitioner uses refined professional communication skills, including writing and speaking effectively, to function in a Baccalaureate-nursing role.
The faculty is an advocate for career mobility and accessibility to nursing education for learners in the rural areas of Vermont and the surrounding states, and is committed to providing opportunities for advanced placement of qualified applicants and accessible career mobility education for Registered Nurses.
The faculty believes that learning is a continuous, dynamic, lifelong process that is a personal responsibility and occurs through active learner involvement. The faculty further believes an educational environment that fosters mutual respect, integrity, intellectual inquiry, and effective communication will promote learning. Learning activities progress through increasing levels of complexity and independent functioning throughout theoretical and clinical learning experiences. The faculty believes that the educational environment will foster a lifetime commitment to personal and professional growth.
The curriculum encompasses the metaparadigm of the major constructs of person, health, environment, and nursing. The faculty believes that these four major constructs are dynamic and responsive to the ever-changing health care system.
Person is defined as individuals, families, groups, populations, and communities that possess diverse characteristics, hold common basic needs, have inherent dignity and self-worth, progress through unique sequential stages in development, are continuously interacting with both external and internal environments, and must be regarded holistically. Recipients of nursing care are referred to as clients.
The faculty believes the environment is multidimensional, having both external and internal processes and phenomena. Environmental influences, conditions, and circumstances surround, interact and affect the health of clients within an interrelated biological, physical, social, economic, and political life context. Environment is believed to be both reciprocal and complementary to the person.
Health is a fluid and dynamic state and is highly sensitive to the client's ability to adjust and adapt to the environment. Through complex adaptation processes, the health of the person varies on a continuum ranging from high-level wellness to illness and death. The goal of adaptation is optimum wellness. Faculty further believes that health is the responsibility of society and all its members. Society has complex needs for health care which are identifiable, change with time, and relate to the cultural characteristics of the person. Each person has the right to health care provided through a mutual and collaborative process, resulting in informed health decisions and mutual accountability for outcomes.
The faculty believes that nursing is a discipline which is both an art and a science that serves to diagnose and treat human responses to actual or potential health problems. Nursing is both a therapeutic alliance and a professional partnership that holistically seeks to promote, protect, and restore health patterns for clients through time and across settings. Providing nursing care involves a deliberate scientific problem solving approach requiring the integration of learned theoretical knowledge and skills through the use of the nursing process or assist clients to a dignified death. The Baccalaureate-prepared nurse engages in a scope of practice that encompasses critical thinking, utilization of selected research, collaboration, discretionary judgments, leadership, and independence. The professional nurse implements standards of care using a variety of skilled competencies and holds the characteristics of professionalism. As a professional, the Baccalaureate-prepared nurse values the unique contributions of the nursing profession, seeks lifelong learning, participates in mentoring relationships, and refines professional identity throughout the professional career.
The conceptual framework provides direction for the selection and organization of learning experiences to achieve program outcomes. The curriculum is centered on six sub-concepts that are derived from the major constructs of Person, Environment, Health, and Nursing. These sub-concepts are introduced and developed progressively throughout the curriculum in nursing and are identified and defined as follows:
Nursing Process
The nurse engages the client in a shared partnership and uses a deliberate scientific process to assess needs, identify health-related goals, plan client centered mutually agreeable care, implement evidence-based nursing activities, and, with the client, evaluate progression toward identified health outcomes.
Communication
The nurse uses refined client-centered communication skills with clients and multidisciplinary members of the health care team in implementing the nursing process and providing nursing care. The nurse works interdependently with the health care team and collaborates in joint decision-making and the coordination of care. The nurse uses refined professional communication skills such as writing, speaking, and listening to effectively function in a Baccalaureate nursing role.
Teaching and Learning
The nurse serves as a health educator and believes that teaching and learning are highly interactive multidimensional processes for the purpose of developing attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors to promote, protect, and restore health and to assist the client in making informed health care and lifestyle choices.
Leadership
The nurse leader promotes an environment that supports the identification of mutually agreed upon goals, works with others to influence behavior toward goal achievement, and strives to take innovative ideas into action. Equally important characteristics of nursing leadership include accountability and responsibility for client care that may involve delegation, supervision, collaboration, and advocacy.
Caring
The nurse demonstrates the collective attitudes and interpersonal actions that convey a sense of compassion and respect for clients, and the commitment to client welfare. Additionally, the nurse plans for and engages in self-care activities.
Research
The nurse implements evidence-based care, integrating nursing theory and research in clinical practice. The nurse develops competencies to examine clinical/client care problems using the methods of scientific inquiry and critical review of nursing research.
Critical Thinking
Synthesizes theoretical and empirical knowledge from the sciences, humanities, and nursing in organizing, planning, and providing care in collaboration with individuals, families, groups, and communities.
