Essential refers to The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], amended 2008).
Four major concepts (nurse generalist, professional role development, critical thinking and patient-centered care), aid the RN-BSN student in becoming a nurse generalist. The concepts are interwoven into program and course objectives, assignments, and program evaluation.
Nurse Generalist - The RN functions as a leader, manager, and advocate when providing patient-centered care in an inter-professional collaborative environment through use of knowledge, skills, professional values, critical thinking, and professional development.
Professional Role Development - The profession of nursing is rapidly changing in response to transformations within the complex healthcare delivery system. In order to prepare the nurse generalist for these new roles, the RN to BSN completion program provides the foundation for lifelong learning, scholarship, graduate education, and specialization within their chosen career path.
Critical Thinking - Nurses function in an environment where information and clinical situations change frequently. Critical thinking enables nurses to analyze and respond to different challenges through use of the nursing process, evidence-based practice, professional standards, information management systems, and ethical codes.
Patient-Centered Care - Nursing focuses on the delivery of quality, safe, ethical, and evidenced-based patient-centered care with emphasis on prevention and population health. Patients include individual patients, families, groups, communities, and populations.
The interconnectedness of these concepts can be seen in our conceptual framework.