Doctor Nursing Practice (DNP) Program

 

General Information
The DNP is a post-master's doctoral program based on The Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice (AACN, 2006) guidelines for the curriculum, and reflects a multidisciplinary design incorporating appropriate graduate level courses from other disciplines. For example, courses from the Management Department in organizational behavior, systems, finance and performance; Health Information and Informatics Department, courses in informatics for nursing and assessing clinical outcomes; and lastly program evaluation from Psychology. Students come to the program as skilled advanced practice nurses, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists and other specialties.

This post-master's program is designed to guide APN professionals in the development of a higher level of leadership skill at the organizational and systems level of practice as change agents for improving health care outcomes that focus on the following essential elements:

1. Scientific Underpinnings for Practice
2. Organizational and System Leadership for Quality Improvement and Systems Thinking
3. Clinical Scholarship and Analytical Methods for Evidence-Based Practice
4. Information System/Technology and Patient Care Technology for the Improvement and Transformation of Health Care
5. Health Care Policy for Advocacy in Health Care
6. Inter-professional Collaboration for Improving Patient and Population Health Outcomes
7. Clinical Prevention and Population Health for Improving the Nation's Health
8. Advanced Nursing Practice

Course Descriptions: DNP Program

NSG 8000: Leadership in HealthCare
2 credits
Study of various dimensions of leadership and how they apply to the health care environment. Includes theoretical models and their application to nursing models of practice, personal and organizational integration of values, key aspects of creating and sustaining a learning organization, and leadership as partnership and teamwork.

NSG 8200: Clinical Outcome Research
2 credits
Knowledge development in areas such as the translation of research into practice, the evaluation of practice, the design of activities aimed at improving the reliability of health care practice and outcomes, and participation in collaborative outcome research. The use of analytical methods to develop best practices and practice guidelines and to facilitate the evaluation of systems of care that will improve patient outcomes are emphasized.

NSG 8201: Clinical Project
1 credit
Emphasis is placed on the use of analytical methods to assess client-centered outcomes in a clinical health care or organizational setting. The focus is on developing a design and evaluation plan for the DNP clinical project. Stage one in a three stage process. Students work independently under the guidance of a faculty advisor and with the assistance of a clinical expert/systems mentor. Attendance is required at a series of pro-seminars designed to facilitate processes essential to the development of an outcomes-, evidence based clinical project. Co-requisite: NSG 8200.

NSG 8202: Ethics in Health Care
2 credits
Analysis of both empirical research and philosophical inquiry in health care ethics with due consideration for human diversity and social context. Exploration of current ethical issues, including relevant contextual factors, within the health care disciplines broadly, and within the student's area of clinical practice and scholarship specifically. Emphasis on the socially organized practices of responsibility that influence ethical decision-making and their implications for health care delivery within the professional domains of administration, clinical care, policy and education. This course focuses primarily on the ethical problems of nursing practice. It is designed to help students increase their knowledge of the domains of ethical experience, articulate the ethical issues they experience in practice, and justify the reasons for taking one course of action over another. Readings are taken from moral philosophy, bioethics, nursing, feminist theory, and social science.

NSG 8203: Clinical Project II
1 credit
Students apply principles of outcomes research in the clinical setting while implementing the DNP clinical project proposed in NSG 8201. Stage two in a three-stage process. Students work independently under the guidance of a faculty advisor and with the assistance of a clinical expert/systems mentor. Attendance is required at a series of pro-seminars designed to facilitate the implantation of the DNP clinical project proposal. Prerequisite: NSG 8201.

NSG 8205: Clinical Project III
3 credits
Stage three in the development and implementation of the DNP clinical project, culminating in completion of an outcomes research project and a scholarly paper. Submission for publication is expected. Students work independently under the guidance of a faculty advisor and with the assistance of a clinical expert/systems mentor. Attendance is required at a series of pro-seminars designed to facilitate completion of the clinical project and disseminations of research findings. Course includes formal presentation, critique, and defense of the DNP clinical projects. Prerequisite: NSG 8203.

NSG 8352: Performance Improvement in Health Care Organizations
3 credits
Examines the concept of performance management and its application to the health care industry for both larger health care organizations and smaller health care settings. Issues related to the extreme pressure exerted by both purchasers and regulatory agencies for healthcare organizations to improve its performance will be analyzed.

NSG 8355: Healthcare Finance
3 credits
Covers finance issues related to healthcare organizations, such as: reimbursement analysis, understanding the nature of costs, service line profitability analysis, and preparation of operating and capital budgets. Students learn how to analyze financial statements and their relationship to organizational decision-making.

NSG 8420: Organizational Behavior
3 credits
Explores the behavior of people within organizations in terms of the factors that are most influential. Those include factors related to individuals, groups and the larger organization system. The course utilizes an experiential learning process that helps students understand their strengths and weaknesses as learners.

NSG 8470: Program Evaluation
2 credits
Program evaluation is the systematic collection of information about the activities, characteristics, and outcomes of programs to make judgments about the program, to improve program effectiveness, and/or to inform decisions about future programming. As this definition emphasizes, the course focuses not on evaluating individuals but on programs or interventions where information from individuals is aggregated to summarize a group's progress and to draw conclusions about program effectiveness.

NSG 8500: Technology Application in Health Care
3 credits
Current and emerging technology applications and data standards in the healthcare industry including the appropriate use of data networks, Legacy systems, technologies that support the evolution of the electronic health record (EHR), image and signal based information systems, as well as Internet and intranet applications are explored. Emphasis is on systems integration, systems security and the processes for evaluating and selecting applications that address organizational goals and functional requirements.

NSG 8506: Assessing Clinical Outcomes
3 credits
This course is designed to prepare health information management professionals to actively participate in outcomes assessment and to exert leadership in implementing clinical outcomes assessment programs within healthcare organizations and systems. The course focuses on the role patient-centered outcomes information plays in assuring that healthcare systems are able to establish cost-effective clinical practices that do improve the health, functional status and well-being of healthcare consumers; accreditation and legislative initiatives impacting healthcare outcomes activities.

NSG 8660: Nursing Management
2 credits
Integration of organizational and management theories within the context of the nursing process to the delivery of nursing services in a variety of settings and systems. The role of the advanced practice nurse in various levels of management is analyzed and required core abilities required of the manager are emphasized. Factors affecting the dynamic changes in the health care system and delivery of nursing care are integrated.