Nursing Curriculum Development – Nursing Essays

Nursing Curriculum Development

A curriculum is a learning plan that is organized and guided by the respective learning institution. To effectively develop a nursing curriculum, it requires one to have a thorough knowledge of the process of curriculum development. The responsible person, committee or faculty should have proper direction starting with planning, implementation as well as monitoring. Nursing Curriculum Development

Nursing School Curriculum for BSN | Bachelors Degree in Nursing School Class Schedule

Developing nursing curriculum includes the following steps:

Needs/Problem Assessment

This involves gathering data and information that pertains to problems in the current nursing practices, training and evaluation in relation to the changing needs in the healthcare industry. For instance, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) is tasked to set a team of medical educators and experts to set guidelines and standards of the curriculum. Nursing Curriculum Development

As such, the nursing curriculum should be designed to address the deficiency of nursing professionals and other emerging challenges such as the increasing aging population, chronic diseases among others.

Assessing Needs of the Targeted Learners

After the AACN undertakes its evaluation, it is time to assess the nursing students’ needs to enable them to embrace the changes. For instance, it is important for nursing students to comprehend the general nursing care and thus, this stage is tasked with the role of determining attitude, knowledge, and skills that are required.

Setting Goals and Measurable Objectives

Since the skills, attitude, and knowledge required from the students is determined, the respective body such as the AACN has refined standards that articulates for the outcome expected from nursing graduates.

The curriculum design should ensure that the coordinator or designer of care/care-provider is a member of the nursing professional organization. The care provider should also be licensed and should adhere to nursing ethical requirements.   Nursing Curriculum Development

Educational Strategies

Education strategies involve creating the leaning materials. The learning materials that are integrated into the nursing curriculum should be based on competency and evidence. This is paramount in enabling the progressive nature of education and a lifelong learning process. Nursing Curriculum Development

The education strategies are also meant to ensure the employment of competent practitioners to safeguard the delivery of quality care in order to promote health outcomes.

Implementation

The implementation process is tasked with determining the best program structure. A newly developed curriculum should be implemented in phases.  The first time implementation should be done on a pilot or trial program. The initial implementation can be tried over one academic year with the help of specific faculty.

Evaluation and Feedback

This involves the evaluation process and criteria to be used to assessment qualification of the nursing students. The evaluation should include theoretical assessment and hands-on practice. Feedback should be obtained from specific faculties tasked with the implementation of the proposed curriculum to identify the gaps and feasibility observed. In this regard, observation from the trial curriculum is made into a report to guide the implementation of the final version of the curriculum. The program evaluation follows the final implementation to see if it is addressing the identified problem.

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