Nursing

At the end of the baccalaureate nursing curriculum, graduates will…

• Demonstrate accountability for practicing nursing within established moral, legal, ethical, regulatory, and humanistic principles.
• Demonstrate an awareness of and responsiveness to the larger context and system of health care and the ability to effectively call on system resources to provide care that is of optimal quality and value.
• Use information and technology to communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error, and support decision-making.
• Identify, evaluate, and use the best current evidence coupled with clinical expertise and consideration of patients’ preferences, experience and values to make practice decisions.
• Function effectively within nursing and interdisciplinary teams, fostering open communication, mutual respect, shared decision making, team learning, and development.
• Minimize risk of harm to patients and providers through both individual performance and system effectiveness.
• Use data to monitor outcomes and care processes and use improvement methods to design and test changes to continuously improve the quality and safety of health care.
• Influence the behavior of individuals or groups of individuals within their environment in a way that will facilitate the establishment and acquisition/achievement of shared goals.
• Deliver holistic nursing care and advocate for health promotion and disease prevention strategies at the individual, family, community, and global levels.
• Demonstrate effective communication skills with clients that foster mutual respect and shared decision making to enhance patient satisfaction and health outcomes.

Based on the Mission, Vision, and Philosophy of the Department of Nursing, the following program goals have been identified. The program goals of the nursing program are to:

1. Prepare graduates to provide safe, evidence-based, patient-centered care that reflects ethical clinical judgement and inter-professional collaboration.
2. Provide an innovative program of study that is responsive to the changes in the healthcare environment.
3. Promote collaboration and partnerships within the communities of New Hampshire and the world beyond.
4. Develop students’ critical thinking skills, to solve problems encountered on the work unit, considering the health care system’s technological resources, agency policies, and client/family needs, to deliver quality care.
5. Promote effective communication across all nursing practice settings, considering psychosocial, physiological, developmental, spiritual, cultural and educational concerns, in order to support positive client outcomes.

The Nursing Program derives its philosophy from the mission statement of Plymouth State University Ut Prosim: That I May Serve. The Department of Nursing embraces innovative and creative approaches to interdisciplinary, culturally-sensitive nursing practice. The faculty believe the purpose of a collegiate undergraduate education is to prepare the professional nurse whose practice is informed by theory and research to positively impact communities. The philosophy is further rooted in the competencies defined by the Nurse of the Future literature (MA Dept. of Higher Education, 2010) and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials of Baccalaureate Education.

The PSU Nursing Department provides a supportive learning environment for nursing students in the classroom, clinical arena, and the greater community. The pursuit of a career in the profession of nursing implies a spirit of life-long learning; in that vein, the Nursing Department seeks to partner with students to create a mutual teaching and learning continuum wherein we all learn from each other. This spirit of inquiry is encouraged through discovery of the arts and sciences of nursing, using a problem-solving approach, whereby students and faculty alike find meaning in their nursing practice, within a framework of mutual respect.   The essence of nursing lies in service to people in need; the PSU motto embraces this spirit of service to our community.