GRADUATE COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

This course focuses on providing the learner with a systematic understanding of 21st century healthcare leadership and administrative skills. Learners review new healthcare leadership skills relative to complex systems, the inter-relationships among key stakeholders in the industry, cultural diversity, creative and intuitive problem-solving techniques, and corporate governance. Administrative topics concerning healing spaces and environments, culturally driven designs, “going green,” and innovative facility layouts are also covered.

This course focuses on providing the learner with the skills relative to healthcare compliance, the law, and ethics. Learners will learn how to develop, promote, and adhere to compliance, regulations, and policies. They will also learn how to assist healthcare information professionals to guide their departments and organizations to ethically and legally obtain optimal reimbursement, plus, develop systems for all aspects in protecting their patients, facilities, professional staff, and employees.

This course explores the healthcare profession from an economic and decision-making perspective as this industry continues to grow in size, both in dollars and relative to overall economic activity in the United States. Learners will explore areas of cost-effectiveness analysis, game theory, supply and demand factors impacting medical care, and staffing issues. In addition, the impacts of medical malpractice, regulations, technologies, HMOs, Medicaid, insurance provides, and types of intervention are also discussed relative to improving the student’s skills in the medical profession.

This course focuses on providing the student with a challenging and focused understanding of epidemiology. The learner is introduced to both descriptive and analytic epidemiology. Relative to descriptive epidemiology, the learner will explore the characteristics and concepts that impact public health issues, states, and events. Concerning analytic epidemiology, learners will discover and quantify health associated diseases, learn to test hypotheses, and identify the causes of health-related diseases and illnesses.

This course explores the healthcare industry’s need to reduce costs and improve quality. Healthcare delivery systems face a similar crisis, as did the U.S. automobile industry many years ago as healthcare consumers become more knowledgeable about healthcare costs and quality measurements associated with their products and services. Learners will examine performance improvement methods, process control, medical informatics, six-sigma, and statistical analysis for improving healthcare services.

This purpose of this course is to increase the learner’s awareness of the dimensions and complexities involved in caring for people from diverse cultural backgrounds. The student is exposed to effective cultural diversity skills and tools, plus, they will exam healthcare issues and perceptions from a broad social viewpoint. Students will investigate cultural health and illness traditions from multiple perspectives, to include American Indian, Alaska Natives, Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White populations.

This course reviews the latest strategies in the theory and practice of strategic management. It discusses how to think in an integrated way about strategic management. Features include core concepts and analytical tools and cases that showcase the important kinds of strategic challenges managers face.

This course provides a current 21st Century snapshot of the world of leadership development and organizational change. It examines social systems that begin to reduce resistance to change and development through more employee and customercentered programs. Organizations studied are widely recognized as among the best in organizational change and leadership development today.

This course explores nursing theory as a foundation for nursing practice for the nurse engaged in more advanced practice. Theory development and utilization in all areas of nursing is examined as well as the importance of various theories in professional nursing practice. Current trends in professional nursing will also be examined regarding various aspects of the nursing role.

This course focuses on the application of critical thinking and clinical reasoning in the administration of medications based on patient’s pathophysiology. The emphasis of the course is on distinguishing the actions and side effects of medications that are both anticipated and unanticipated applied to the pathophysiology of the disease being treated. Topics to be covered include the pathophysiology of disease, medications that affect these conditions and how lifestyle, age and culture influence medication use and the disease process. Learners will apply these concepts to patients with pathophysiologic conditions and their need for various medications for their conditions.

This course examines systematic history taking, interviewing, and other core assessment skills, as well as correct performance of the physical examination needed by learners moving into a more advanced practice nursing role. A holistic approach is used that includes the assessment of the physical, developmental, psychosocial, cultural, and spiritual dimensions and includes health promotion and disease prevention. There is a review of relevant anatomy and physiology along with examples of examination techniques and corresponding written documentation of the assessment. Learners will be able to practice history and exam techniques with virtual patients and will show mastery of skills via a video demonstration at the end of the course.

This course explores the sociocultural, environmental, and economic health needs of various populations, including assessment of epidemiology, worldview, and health literacy. Various aspects of health and health promotion are analyzed including the impact of infectious disease, nutrition, reproductive issues, communication, unintentional injury, disease, and aging. A review of planning and managing health promotion programs and health systems that meet global populations and cultural needs will be examined.

This course presents an overview of the financial, policy and ethical issues that advanced practice nurses and other health care providers may face during their practice in the healthcare arena. It provides learners with a review of professional standards and issues that may arise in healthcare including ethical dilemmas in care, financial considerations and policy decisions that may influence the provision of healthcare across populations. The ability to analyze policy, financial and ethical decisions through timely discussions and informative research along with application of relevant policy, finance, and ethical decisions in practice situations is emphasized.

This course examines the research process and demonstrate how this systematic framework relates to evidence-based practice. Learners will develop skills in in studying and critically appraising published research as well as developing quantitative or qualitative research including the research question, review of literature, methodology and evaluation of the applicability of research findings to clinical practice. Statistical methods, including rationales for use and procedures to analyze research findings are covered. Included in the course is management of data, how to “clean” data, and how to work around missing data.

This course focuses on responsibilities of nurses in the leadership and management roles in the practice of professional nursing in a more advanced role. Topics covered includes clinical decision-making, technology to improve patient outcomes, and leadership and management practice in inter-professional healthcare delivery. Learners will be able to analyze various role requirements in management situations through discussion and case studies. Learners will also examine principles of leadership change, health organizations and systems, technology to improve population-based care, critical thinking principles to improve patient outcomes, clinical decision-making using evidence-based practice, and inter-professional healthcare delivery. Telehealth and the impacts of the Affordable Care Act will also be included as they impact the leadership role.

This course addresses the key topics in health care policy and management, presenting evidence-based views of current issues by integrating evidence to explain the current conditions and present support for needed change. Learners will be able to analyze various settings and evaluate implementation of health policy, including the impact of the Affordable Care Act, particularly on Medicare, Medicaid, and large and small group insurance markets. Topics covered will also include nursing, disease management, mental health, women’s health, children’s health, and care for the homeless.

This course explores the health policy process from agenda setting through policy and program evaluation. The course will include the impact of social media, economics, theory, finance and active participation on current health policy, political action and policy making. Topics covered include inter-professional practice, education, and research and the Affordable Care Act and other laws that affect the health care of consumers and the organization of the health care system.

This course explores the financial topics all nurse managers need to know and use including how financial management fits into the healthcare organization. Topics include accounting principles, cost analysis, planning and control management of the organization’s financial resources, and the use of management tools as well as current issues including healthcare reform, quality financing, budgeting for performance, benchmarking and costing of nursing services.

This course provides advanced theories and techniques of organizational development focusing on information regarding the design, management, and control of organizational development programs in business. The public sector and social services organizations are summarized.

Today’s healthcare environment demands that practice be based on evidence, so the educational process should also be based on best practice and evidence. This course is designed to provide potential and current nursing faculty with the tools and knowledge they need to achieve highly successful outcomes for teaching nursing students and staff. The role of nursing faculty and not just the educational process will be discussed, including examples of best practices within nursing education. Topics included in the course cover the role of the nurse educator when using social media and informatics, different types of classroom and student involvement, new innovations in online education and simulation education. Nurse educator competencies will also be discussed.

This course explores innovative instructional methods and teaching strategies that can be utilized in nursing education. In this course, learners will develop theoretically based, teaching/learning strategies focused on individual learner needs within classroom and clinical learning environments. Different styles of learning, diversity in the classroom and critical thinking are covered as well as creative and innovative strategies and techniques with discussion on simulation in the classroom. Specific examples and suggestions for how to implement teaching strategies, how to identify types of learners as well as how to predict potential issues or challenges with each strategy are also identified. Learners discuss specific teaching-learning strategies for traditional classroom settings, the clinical arena, and through the use of technology for both web-based and virtual simulation.

This course explores teaching and learning in nursing education including assessment and evaluation, curriculum development, using technology, teaching in simulation, learning lab and online courses, models for clinical teaching, scholarship and evidence-based education, and other components of the educator role. Relevant research to provide evidence for the concepts is presented, incorporating practical examples of the methods and strategies and theoretical and practical knowledge essential for effective teaching in nursing with a focus on technology in education.

This course examines a variety of innovative computer technologies that support the teaching-learning process in the classroom and clinical settings. Course content includes application of information technology in nursing practice and education. This course allows nurses to understand current and future trends and how to integrate technology into nursing education in order to effectively prepare students for a new, technologically driven healthcare environment. Topics include

learning theories, the instructional design process, changes in higher education, and variations in learning environment while allowing learners to formulate new teaching strategies and apply information while utilizing critical thinking.

This course explores the theory and ideas necessary to develop an evidence-based, context-relevant, unified curriculum with a focus on the concepts of faculty development, ongoing appraisal, and scholarship. The development of evidence-based curriculum with implementation, and evaluation as well as execution are discussed along with the development, implementation, and evaluation of a curriculum offered via distance learning. Exploration of ideas around readiness for curriculum implementation, the role of faculty development, ongoing appraisal, and scholarship as core processes of curriculum work, instruction for how to design courses and brain-based learning are also explored.

This course examines how nursing educators can measure and evaluate the level of learning that their students have achieved and covers fundamental concepts of what constitutes reliable tools and rubrics for measuring students’ classroom and clinical performance. Learners will learn how to develop a test blueprint and to assemble, administer, write, and score all types of tests and test questions, and analyze tests and test performance for both classroom and clinical evaluation. Guidelines for preventing cheating, and for conducting productive posttest discussions are also presented. Other topics covered include strategies for evaluating higher cognitive levels of learning and for evaluating written assignments with sample scoring rubrics and important social, ethical, and legal issues associated with testing and evaluation.

The MSN Capstone Project is designed to provide learners with the opportunity to develop a capstone project that demonstrates measurable proficiencies related to the program outcomes. Learners will develop a project that requires application of learning about nursing theory, population health and culture, statistics, leadership, nursing research and experiential learning from their professional experiences. During this course, learners will select a capstone topic and begin their project planning. Projects will be implemented during the elective courses and the final capstone paper and oral presentation will occur at the end of their learning in CAP 6903, MSN Capstone Project II.