Curriculum
This is a 19 credit graduate degree program. It is designed for part-time attendance by working nurses.
Course Descriptions
NURS 586 — Innovation in Advanced Nursing Practice: Theory and Application
This course will explore the theoretical literature from diverse disciplines on how innovations are conceived, implemented particularly in nursing practice and how such innovations run their course and spawn other innovations. Theories of innovation and invention particularly applied to health care will be explored as well as disruptive innovations in health care, breakthrough dilemmas, innovation diffusion and the roles of mentoring and apprenticeship in innovation. The course will explore how innovation adds value to nursing practice through the development of greater efficiencies, lower cost, greater accuracy, greater safety, and expanded access to quality care. The course will also include how health care and nursing organizations and systems are structured to drive and support or to stifle innovation and intra/entrepreneurial processes. Finally, nursing/healthcare oriented exercises on how to “see things differently” and “differentiate between need and possibility” will be included.Back to course list
NURS 587 — Case Studies in Intra/Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Nursing
Using a case study model of great and bad ideas in nursing practice, education, and administration, students will explore some of the intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial experiments, innovations, and creative ventures in nursing, including both successes and failures. For example, students might analyze the rise and demise of “Patient Focused Care” as an organizer of nursing care delivery; the decline of the entry level Nursing Doctorate (ND); uses of technology to improve nursing care; and the successful implementation of the Associate Degree in Nursing; nurse practitioners as disruptive innovations in the delivery of primary care, and the rise of nurse managed health centers as cost effective alternatives to primary care delivery. These are but a few of the infinite number of nursing trends, practices and ideas, both good and bad, that could be examined using the Harvard Business School case study model.
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NURS 588 — The Nurse as Intra/Entrepreneur and Consultant
Using a business development model, each individual will create a business plan, from vision, through action plan, to opening day. Your idea could be for a new service for your organization or an idea for a service that you would provide as your own business. This course will provide practical skills on how a nurse can start a business, how to act as a consultant, and how to use advanced nursing knowledge to support either an independent or partially independent practice. Content will focus on needed traits and skills of intra/entrepreneur, business plan components, best business practices, inexpensive marketing strategies and “how” of starting and running a business.
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NURS 636 — Innovation Capstone Project I
This is the first of a three course sequence where under the direction of a nursing faculty mentor with direct expertise in the student’s planned project, students will spend three quarters developing and producing a capstone project. The faculty mentor may also require the student to obtain an additional non-faculty co-mentor in the area of the student’s project. The student will complete the project by submitting an extensive portfolio of the project’s conception, development, implementation and evaluation. The student will also submit the original work product, i.e. invention, innovation, design, paper, and submit a 30-minute videotaped presentation of the project. During this three quarter period, students will attend class online, both synchronously and asynchronously, to discuss the progress of their projects – both pitfalls and successes, and provide support to each other during this period of creative, but independent work.
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NURS 637 — Innovation Capstone Project II
Capstone Project II will focus on further creation and if possible, implementation of the project. It will also begin to focus on final plan or product of the project, video production, and defense of the project.
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NURS 638— Innovation Capstone Project III
The third and final of a 3 course sequence where under the direction of a nursing faculty mentor with direct expertise in the student's planned project. Students will spend 3 quarters developing and producing a capstone project. Researcher, expert, and leader are presented and explored. Interpretation and application professional issues, practice issues, legislative issues, certification issues, insurance issues, legal issues and ethical conflict resolution in advanced nursing practice are explored.
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NURS 669 — Professional Seminar for Advanced Nursing Practice
This required course is the application and integration of the role and competencies of the MSN prepared Nurse with advanced nursing knowledge who will seek employment in a diversity of advanced practice roles. The roles of the MSN graduate as clinician, educator, researcher, expert, and leader are presented and explored. Interpretation and application of professional issues, practice issues, legislative issues, certification issues, insurance issues, legal issues, and ethical conflict resolution in advanced nursing practice are explored, and integrated into a model for interdisciplinary collaborative practice. Emphasis will be on preparing the graduating MSN prepared nurse for practice and of assuming new professional advanced practice roles. Last, all MSN graduates must establish competency in oral and written communication skills as a graduation outcome.
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