Program Overview

School of Nursing RN to BSN Degree Completion Option

The RN to BSN Degree Completion Option's contemporary curriculum reflects the competencies that nurses need to practice in today's healthcare system. All courses are taught by expert faculty who teach on IU's campuses, ensuring that students learn from the best.

Courses

Required nursing coursework consists of nine core courses and two electives. Key points to note include:

• Students may take up to nine credit hours of non-nursing courses (e.g., general education courses) while completing their nursing coursework.
• General education requirements must be completed prior to graduation.
• Students must take NURS-B 331 first and NURS-R 470 last. All other nursing courses may be taken in any order desired.

Core Courses

• NURS-B 304 Health Policy (3 cr.): Critically analyzes social, ethical, cultural, economic, and political issues affecting the delivery of health and nursing services globally. Examines government and entrepreneurial interests, emphasizing the impact of policy decisions on professional nursing practice and health services.
• NURS-B 331 Transition to Baccalaureate Nursing Practice (3 cr.): Bridges the nurse to the essential elements of baccalaureate professional practice. Students examine intra and interprofessional communication, collaboration, and teamwork to enhance quality patient care, exploring nursing professional organizations, issues in professional practice, and the impact of lifelong learning on career development.
• NURS-B 404 Informatics (3 cr.): Addresses nursing informatics, including the state of the science and issues for research, development, and practice. Clarifies concepts of nursing, technology, and information management, comprising theory, practice, and social and ethical issues in nursing and healthcare informatics.
• NURS-H 355 Data Analysis in Clinical Practice and Health-Care Research (3 cr.): Introduces nursing and other health sciences students to basic concepts and techniques of data analysis needed in professional healthcare practice. Examines principles of measurement, data summarization, and univariate and bivariate statistics, with emphasis on applying fundamental concepts to real-world situations in client care.
• NURS-R 375 Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice (3 cr.): Focuses on nursing research and evidence-based practice. Students develop skills in retrieving and appraising literature relevant to clinical problems, understanding the research process, and critiquing evidence from research publications and other sources to inform evidence-based nursing practice.
• NURS-R 470 Clinical Nursing Practice Capstone (3 cr.): Allows students to synthesize knowledge and skills learned in the baccalaureate program and demonstrate competencies consistent with program outcomes, refining their nursing practice skills. Students plan and organize learning experiences, design a project, and practice professional nursing in a safe and effective manner.
• NURS-S 474 Applied Health-Care Ethics (3 cr.): Explores the nurse's role in ethical clinical practice, academic work, health policy, and research conduct, focusing on the advocacy role of the nurse. Discusses common ethical problems and applies strategies for resolving ethical dilemmas.
• NURS-S 475 A Multisystem Approach to the Health of the Community (3 cr.): Applies basic epidemiological principles and community health nursing models in collaboration with diverse groups. Applies disease prevention strategies to individuals and populations to promote health, planning, implementing, and evaluating interventions for populations in the community.
• NURS-S 487 Nursing Management (3 cr.): Focuses on the development of management skills assumed by professional nurses, including delegation of responsibilities, networking, facilitation of groups, conflict resolution, leadership, case management, and collaboration. Addresses organizational structure, delivery systems, change, managing quality and performance, budgeting and resource allocation, staffing, scheduling, evaluation, and career development.

Elective Courses

• NURS-B 344 Comprehensive Health Assessment (3 cr.): Focuses on the complete health assessment, the nursing process, and its relationship to the prevention and early detection of disease across the lifespan. Students learn skills of interview, inspection/observation, palpation, percussion, and auscultation in assessing clients across the lifespan and comparing normal from abnormal findings.
• NURS-B 403 Aging With Dignity (3 cr.): Promotes a holistic approach to persons in the later years of life, discussing death and dying, legal and ethical issues, family caregiving, and future challenges in the context of best practices as outlined by the John A Hartford Foundation: Institute for Geriatric Nursing.
• NURS-K 301 The Art and Science of Complementary Health (3 cr.): Serves as an introduction to a variety of complementary therapies, including healing touch, guided imagery, hypnosis, acupuncture, aromatherapy, reflexology, and massage. Critically examines each therapy through assigned readings, literature reviews, presentations, guest lecturers, and optional experiential activities.
• NURS-K 305 New Innovations in Health and Health Care (3 cr.): Explores emergent trends in health and healthcare, including technological advances in healthcare, developing approaches to care based on new knowledge and/or research findings, and trends in healthcare delivery in a themed, survey, or independent study format.
• NURS-K 310 Self Management and Health Promotion (3 cr.): Explores self-management and health promotion based on the Eight Dimensions of Wellness. Unfolds as modules, each focusing on a dimension of wellness, examining occupational wellness, social wellness, financial wellness, physical wellness, emotional wellness, environmental wellness, spiritual wellness, and intellectual wellness.
• NURS-K 434 Current Trends in Global Health Nursing (3 cr.): Provides learning opportunities for global health issues contributing to health disparities and ways healthcare workers strive to address them. Prioritizes healthcare issues highlighted by the World Health Organization, including infectious and chronic illness, women's health, environmental impacts, and disaster response.
• NURS-P 345 Pharmacology for Professional Nursing Practice (3 cr.): Focuses on basic principles of pharmacology, including pharmacologic properties of major drug classes and individual drugs, with an emphasis on the clinical application of drug therapy through the nursing process.
• NURS-S 410 Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response (3 cr.): Focuses on theoretical and practical perspectives of disaster response and emergency management for nursing professionals. Explores disaster/emergency response preparedness, leadership principles, decision-making, and recovery training measures for healthcare providers devoted to supporting community disaster resilience.
• NURS-S 420 Care Coordination in Transitions of Care (3 cr.): Synthesizes knowledge and skills relevant to care coordination to ensure smooth care transition. Develops an understanding of the role of the RN as a member of an interprofessional team, as well as options for the most appropriate care setting for an individual patient.