End-of-program outcomes

End-of-program outcomes for Decker School of Nursing programs leading to the Master of Science (MS) in Nursing degree and the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree are consistent with professional standards and congruent with the school's mission, vision and philosophy.

Master of Science programs

MS Essential I: Background for Practice from Science and Humanities

  • Integrate nursing and related sciences including emergent genetic/genomic evidence into the analysis, design, implementation and evaluation of advanced nursing care to diverse populations while accounting for client values and clinical judgment.

MS Essential II: Organization and Systems Leadership

  • Enact leadership skills and behaviors to assure high-quality, culturally responsive, cost-effective healthcare within a variety of organizational systems and in collaboration with interprofessional teams and using sound economic principles.

MS Essential III: Quality Improvement and Safety

  • Initiate quality improvement methods to ensure client safety and improve healthcare outcomes by monitoring, analyzing and evaluating healthcare data within complex healthcare systems.

MS Essential IV: Translating and Integrating Scholarship into Practice

  • Translate evidence into practice through application of relevant theory, use of clinical practice guidelines, critical appraisal of research and acquisition/dissemination of knowledge to resolve practice problems, enhance healthcare delivery and improve health outcomes for aggregates.

MS Essential V: Informatics and Healthcare Technologies

  • Employ information management systems and emerging technologies to deliver and coordinate care across multiple settings, analyze point-of-care outcomes, ensure safe and effective quality care, support lifelong learning and health literacy and communicate health information with individuals and groups.

MS Essential VI: Health Policy and Advocacy

  • Promote social justice by advocating, analyzing, interpreting, developing and implementing healthcare policy at the institutional, local, state and/or federal level for the betterment of nursing practice and healthcare delivery.

MS Essential VII: Interprofessional Collaboration for Improving Client and Population Health Outcomes

  • Use effective verbal and written communication strategies to develop and lead interprofessional teams and partnerships to promote and improve client and population health outcomes.

MS Essential VIII: Clinical Prevention and Population Health for Improving Health

  • Synthesize principles and determinants of health to advance equitable and proficient services for health promotion and the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and evaluation of responses to health or illness in individuals, families, communities and aggregates/clinical populations.

MS Essential IX: Master's Level Nursing Practice

  • Ensure the delivery of safe, quality, evidence-based care to diverse populations presenting with complex healthcare problems in a variety of settings at the local, state, national or global level exemplifying the highest standards of the profession.

DSON Essential X: Ethics

  • Demonstrate accountability for personal and professional conduct exemplifying core nursing values and ethical behaviors and consistent with the legal scope and standards of practice.

Doctor of Nursing Practice programs

  1. Integrate, translate and apply established and evolving disciplinary nursing knowledge, ways of knowing and knowledge from other disciplines to deliver and improve outcomes for diverse patient populations, including those who are vulnerable or live in rural areas.
  2. Employ established and emerging principles of safety and improvement science within complex healthcare systems to ensure the delivery of safe, effective, ethical and fiscally responsible quality care to improve patient outcomes.
  3. Generate, synthesize, translate, apply and disseminate nursing knowledge to improve health and transform healthcare to promote safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, ethical and patient-centered care.
  4. Synthesize information and communication technologies and informatics processes to provide safe, high-quality and efficient healthcare, gather data, form information to drive ethical decision-making, and support professionals as they expand knowledge and wisdom for practice in accordance with best practice and professional and regulatory standards.
  5. Respond to and lead within complex healthcare systems to effectively and proactively coordinate resources to provide safe, quality, equitable care to diverse and underserved populations.
  6. Collaborate across professions and with care team members, patients, families, communities and other stakeholders to optimize care, enhance the healthcare experience, strengthen outcomes and foster a climate of mutual learning, respect and shared values.
  7. Provide healthcare across the continuum from public health prevention to disease and disaster management of populations and engage in collaborative activities with both traditional and nontraditional partnerships from affected communities, public health, industry, academia, healthcare, local government entities and others for the improvement of equitable population health outcomes.
  8. Provide person-centered, holistic, developmentally appropriate and evidence-based care focused on the individual within multiple contexts, including family and important others across the lifespan, utilizing a scientific body of knowledge that guides nursing practice regardless of specialty or functional area.
  9. Demonstrate accountability for personal and professional conduct, exemplifying core nursing values and ethical behaviors and consistent with the legal scope and standards of practice to cultivate a sustainable professional nursing identity.
  10. Participate in activities and self-reflection that foster personal health, resilience, well-being and lifelong learning, and support the acquisition of nursing expertise and assertion of leadership.