MacMurray College

Division of Nursing

Mission Statement

The MacMurray College Department of Nursing is among the few professional nursing education programs in central Illinois providing baccalaureate nursing education within a liberal arts institution.  Students enter the program from diverse geographic and social backgrounds, bringing their unique contributions to the study of nursing.  The MacMurray College Nursing Program prepares graduates for professional nursing practice, graduate education, and ongoing career development within a nursing curriculum which is supported by an integrated liberal arts core.  This integration of liberal education promotes sound interpretation of new knowledge, clear articulation of thoughts, interdisciplinary connections, and discrimination in making judgments about factors that influence the human condition.  Baccalaureate nursing education at MacMurray College prepares students to enter the nursing profession with the values, competencies, knowledge and skills necessary to provide, design, manage, and coordinate nursing care for diverse groups in a variety of settings.   Consistent with the mission and goals of MacMurray College, the Nursing Department stresses excellence in teaching, service, and practice. 

 

Philosophy

The nursing faculty believes that nursing is a scientific, practice discipline that integrates knowledge from nursing science, the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the liberal arts in identifying holistic health needs and designing individualized care that is directed toward achieving quality outcomes.  As a scientific discipline, nursing involves systematic analysis of data and testing of interventions designed to achieve projected outcomes. As a practice discipline, nurses must apply professional values, competencies, knowledge, and skills in providing direct and indirect care to individuals, families, and aggregates within a caring context.  

We believe that caring is essential to nursing and that the focus of nursing care is the health of the holistic person.  Persons can be defined as individual systems that are the unit of care or they can be viewed by nurses as subsystems within larger units of care such as the family, group, or larger community.  Regardless of whether the individual health care agency calls the person a patient, client, or consumer, the MacMurray nursing faculty defines persons as holistic living systems with personal, unique stories, situations, and characteristics that define their individuality and their responses to health and illness.  We believe that health and illness are personal constructs that can only be defined subjectively. Disease, however, is viewed as an aberration in one or more subsystems.  Humans can have disease and view themselves as healthy or they can be disease-free but still feel ill.  Nurses must view health and illness from a holistic perspective, providing care that focuses on treating human responses to health, illness, and disease. 

 

Philosophy of Nursing Education

The nursing faculty believes that the primary goal of nursing education is to maintain its social contract with society by educating competent nurses who are stewards of the profession.    As reflected in the AACN Essentials of Baccalaureate Nursing Education, nursing education should promote development of the values, competencies, knowledge, and skills of the profession.  Baccalaureate prepared nurses must be able to develop caring nurse-patient relationships in order to assess the holistic health needs of individuals, families, and aggregates and design individualized care that is directed toward achieving quality outcomes.  In designing and evaluating care, they should be able to systematically analyze data, develop outcome-focused plans, and provide direct nursing care. 

The nursing faculty believe the development of professional values, competencies, knowledge, and skills is best promoted through a combination of classroom assignments, hands-on practice in the nursing skills laboratory, clinical experiences, and community service opportunities.  Classroom, laboratory, clinical and community experiences should expose students to opportunities to analyze and interpret experiences, reflect on their own beliefs and assumptions, explore current evidence-based knowledge, design plans of care, apply nursing standards, and evaluate judgments.  Classroom assignments are outcome directed and aimed at helping students integrate and think critically about previous and new concepts relevant to nursing.  Hands-on practice in the nursing skills laboratory allows students to practice and review psychomotor skills.  Laboratory proficiency examinations require students to demonstrate psychomotor skills within the context of clinical simulations.  Clinical experiences should not only allow integration of classroom content and psychomotor skills, but should also promote the development of clinical judgment as a priority outcome.  In providing community service, students have the opportunity to apply professional values and develop professional behaviors. 

The nursing faculty believes that the educator should function as facilitator, transmitter, role model, and mentor.  Within an ever-changing health care system that deals with dynamic human conditions, it is impossible to teach students about every situation they will encounter or every piece of equipment they will use.  Students must be able to think critically beyond classroom content and be active participants in the educational process.  As active participants in the educational process, students have the responsibility to come to class prepared to discuss assignments, come to lab proficiencies prepared to demonstrate required skills competently, and come to clinical settings prepared to seek learning experiences.  Nursing education is an integrating experience and students must constantly build on previous knowledge, applying it to new situations.  Unlike other disciplines, nursing students are constantly applying their knowledge, values, competencies, and skills in caring for human lives.  This requires maturity, motivation, conscientious planning, ethical and moral standards, responsibility, and accountability. 

 

Sources:

AACN. (1998). The Essential of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice. Washington, DC.