Graduate Outcomes

Upon completion of this program, the Associate Degree Nursing graduate can:

1. Advocate for patients and families in ways that promote their self-determination, integrity, and ongoing growth as human beings (human flourishing);
   1. Develop, implement and evaluate individualized plans of care focusing on services and activities that promote independence, maintain or restore health, or support a peaceful death;
   2. Advocate for the access to and quality of care for patients;
   3. Use teaching/learning processes to facilitate the patients in informed decision-making to achieve positive outcomes and support the client's functional patterns;
   4. Provide culturally competent care that demonstrates respect for diverse patients;
2. Make judgments in practice, substantiated with evidence, that integrate nursing science in the provision of safe, quality-care and promote the health of patients within a family and community context (nursing judgment);
   1. Utilize the nursing process while incorporating Gordon's functional health patterns as a basis for clinical judgment to optimize outcomes of care for the patient, family, and community;
   2. Perform essential nursing skills as identified by the critical criteria;
   3. Collaborate with the patient, family, significant others and members of the health care team in the management of care;
   4. Establish and maintain effective/therapeutic communication with patients, families, significant others, and members of the health care team;
   5. Manage the direct provision of nursing care through effective organizational skills, appropriate delegation, and supervision within the scope of practice;
   6. Employ principles of quality and safety, healthcare policy, and cost effectiveness to improve healthcare outcomes;
3. Implement one's role as a nurse in ways that reflect integrity, responsibility, ethical practice and an evolving identity as a nurse committed to evidence-based practice, caring, advocacy, and safe, quality care for diverse patients within a family and community context (professional identity);
   1. Recognize situations beyond one's knowledge and experience, and seek consultation from appropriate resources in a changing healthcare environment;
   2. Integrate caring behaviors in managing care;
   3. Exhibit professional behaviors/practice as defined by the ethical, legal, and regulatory frameworks of nursing;
   4. Use information and technology to communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error and support decision making;
4. Examine the evidence that underlies clinical nursing practice to challenge the status quo, question underlying assumptions, and offer new insights to improve the quality of care for patients, families, and communities (spirit of inquiry);
   1. Recognize and examine evidence-based literature/research for use in nursing practice;
   2. Value continuous learning within the nursing profession;

General Education Competency Statements:

5. Knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural worlds
   1. Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts
6. Intellectual and practical skills, including
   1. inquiry and analysis,
   2. critical and creative thinking,
   3. written and oral communication,
   4. quantitative literacy,
   5. information literacy,
   6. teamwork and problem solving
7. Personal and social responsibility, including
   1. civic knowledge and engagement (local and global),
   2. intercultural knowledge and competence.
   3. ethical reasoning and action,
   4. foundations and skills for lifelong learning
8. Integrative learning, including
   1. synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized skills