This philosophy represents the faculty’s core beliefs regarding human beings, environment, health, nursing, education and the role of the Associate Degree Nurse. Our philosophy is the foundation of our curriculum that is designed to prepare nurses who will be able to meet the challenges facing healthcare practitioners today, which include the explosion of both information and information technology, the redesign of the health care delivery system, ethical dilemmas based on the advancement of science and intervening in disasters. 

We believe that every person is a unique being worthy of respect and dignity. In our nursing framework, biological and social components integrate seamlessly in individuals who use self-care to maintain their health status. We also believe that the environment, which is viewed as the totality of the patient’s experience, includes the family, institutions, society, culture and the global community, has a dramatic influence on health status.

Health is characterized by wholeness in physical and mental functioning where physical, psychological, interpersonal and social aspects of health are inseparable in the person. An individual’s response to stressors may change the ability for the patient to engage in self-care, resulting in deficits in meeting basic needs and requiring the need for nursing care. Individuals are moving toward maturation and achievement of their full human potential. Humans have universal self-care requisites and nurses need to be tireless advocates for patient’s pursuit of these universal needs.

Nursing is an art through which the nurse gives specialized assistance to person in need of nursing services. The art of nursing is practiced by “doing for” the person who is unable to “do for himself.” Nursing is a practical and a didactic art with a significant emphasis placed on supporting patients and their families to better meet their health care needs. The Associate Degree graduates are prepared to function in a variety of settings in a collaborative role with other healthcare practitioners as providers and managers of preventive, restorative, and supportive care to individuals. Actions to overcome or prevent the development of a self-care deficit are provided in partnership with patients using best practices to provide patients with comprehensive coordinated care. Nurses are committed to professional values, professional development and lifelong learning.

The faculty facilitates a supportive environment for learning. The student is an active participant in the learning process. Each student will have the opportunity to develop the core competencies that that the faculty have identified that characterize the well-educated nurse. Students work closely with professors who care about them and provide opportunities for student to become self-confident lifelong learners. The faculty supports a variety of learning styles and unique needs. The faculty is committed to technological innovations in healthcare delivery, clinical practice, and education and utilizes a variety of teaching learning methods including interactive computer assisted technology. The faculty believes that learning is a life-long process and involves a change in behavior in response to an individual’s need for cognitive and psychomotor development. Students are primarily responsible for their own learning by being active participants in the learning process and by exercising critical thinking to meet objectives and attain performance outcomes. There exists interdependence between the faculty and the student that is enhanced throughout the educational process by constructive communication. In each course, therefore, the faculty directs and assists the student toward individual achievement. The faculty evaluates the student’s progress by using behavioral objectives and outcomes that determine that the student has demonstrated minimal competency for safe and accountable practice. The faculty reserves the right to determine the student’s achievement of objectives in order to work within the scope of ADN practice. Students acquire clinical proficiency through their clinical experiences in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics and community.

Competencies of the Associate Degree Graduate in Nursing include: professional behavior, communication, assessment, clinical decision making, caring interventions, teaching and learning, collaboration, and managing care. These competencies are components of the organizing framework with the nursing process, and the Dorothea Orem Model of Self-Care.