NURS FPX 6107 Assessment 2 Course Development and Influencing factors

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Capella university

NURS-FPX 6107 Curriculum Design, Development, and Evaluation

Prof. Name

Date

Course Development and Influencing Factors

This assessment will center on implementing a new course, Ethics in Advanced Nursing Practices, into Duke University’s ABSN curriculum. The course focuses on the ethical challenges encountered during the decision-making process in the current nursing practice. This analysis presents a rationale for the course, a suggested topical outline, and a discussion of how the roles and responsibilities of the faculty members are divided during the course development. This paper explores internal and external influences affecting curriculum development. Furthermore, the assessment determines the impact of the institution’s mission, philosophy, and framework, which are integrated with the internal and external stakeholders.

Course Description and Placement

Ethics in Advanced Nursing Practices should be offered in Duke University’s ABSN program. The literature explains that ethics education prepares healthcare professionals and students to recognize and resolve ethically difficult workplace situations (Andersson et al., 2022). This course provides nursing students with the knowledge and skills to solve complex ethical problems in healthcare. It involves critical thinking and evidence-based approaches to addressing ethical dilemmas and fosters interprofessional relationships.

This course would be most appropriate in the program’s last semester and augment current leadership and advanced practice courses. By placing it at the end, the students will have already developed clinical skills, pathophysiology, and pharmacology that will allow the application of ethical principles in the clinical setting. Further, it will link them to professional practice and remind them of the significance of moral decision-making in clinical and managerial capacities. The course is relevant to Duke’s mission of increasing health equity and social justice and appropriately challenges students to promote ethical practices in various contexts (Duke University School of Nursing, n.d.). The course prepares future nurse leaders to impact policy and enhance quality and patient-centered care by confronting ethical issues in advanced nursing practice.

Rationale for Including this Course in the Curriculum

Incorporation of Ethics in Advanced Nursing Practices should be included in the ABSN program at Duke University since the course prepares nursing students for challenges facing the healthcare industry in the current society. It is crucial for these reasons:

Addressing Emerging Ethical Challenges and Moral Distress: The changes in health care, including genomics, artificial intelligence, and scarce resources, challenge nurses to analyze and make sound decisions. Studies show that ethics training provides nurses with basic tools for problem-solving and personal stress management. Moral education can also increase self-esteem, reduce fear, and improve nurses’ ability to handle pro-ethical decision-making situations (Tavakol et al., 2023).
Aligning with Professional Standards: Ethics is a competency major health organizations like the American Nurses Association (ANA) mentioned. The ANA’s Code of Ethics emphasizes nurses’ responsibility to navigate ethical conflicts with competence and compassion (American Nurses Association, n.d.). Offering an upper-level ethics course helps meet these standards while educating students to become effective patient advocates to promote social justice, moral duty, and ethical practices.

By incorporating this course, Duke’s ABSN program will complement its mission of preparing leaders in the nursing profession with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to promote health through excellence in education, clinical practice, and social justice.

Topical Outline and Relationship with Existing Courses

The subject areas discussed in the Ethics in Advanced Nursing Practices course map (Appendix 1) sit well with several classes in the Duke ABSN curriculum, hence establishing a good ground for ethical decision-making in different clinical and leadership roles. For example, Nursing Care of the Childbearing Family and Nursing Care of Infants, Children, and Adolescents have topics that might include informed consent, autonomy, and the ethical analysis of family-centered care, all discussed in the ethics course. Likewise, Nursing Management of Adult Patients and Nursing Care of Patients with Complex Health Problems entails nurses balancing ethical issues like end-of-life decisions, treatment options, and patient care planning, which will enhance the moral principles of the proposed course.

The Gerontological Nursing course relates to aging and decision-making capacity, where ethics is central to decision-making on the care plans for elderly patients in line with the ethical frameworks expounded. The Pathophysiology and Pharmacology I and II courses also address the aspect of moral decision-making in clinical practice, especially when dealing with medication and treatments for those categories of patients. Furthermore, the leadership-focused courses Professional Nursing: Two articles that will benefit from the ethical principles covered are Evolution as an Effective Team Member and Professional Nursing: Evolution as a Leader since leadership and teamwork are founded on ethics in patient care and collaboration. This course will empower students with ethical skills to practice and lead in these complicated clinical and leadership environments.

Faculty Collaboration

When deciding on a new course offering, the new course’s candidacy shall pass through several stakeholders before its introduction into the curriculum since it complies with academic and clinical faculties. The participants should be selected from the clinical nursing faculty, nursing leadership, philosophy, medical ethics, and pathophysiology. Students’ clinical preceptors and nurse leaders will be engaged to determine their experience of ethical issues within patient care, leadership, and teamwork that will enhance the subjects taught in the course. Furthermore, the faculty would work with the curriculum committee to reflect on where the course fits within the rest of the curriculum and how it would raise the learning bar and meet accreditation requirements (Hoare et al., 2024).

Engagement with the institution’s ethics department is necessary to guarantee that the course is based on modern ethical theories and practices. Further, faculty need to engage with regulatory agencies, for example, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE), to guarantee that the course complies with the nursing education and ethical requirements across the United States (Lewis et al., 2022). Such collaborations aim to develop an academically sound and clinically focused course that will equip students with a sound understanding of ethics related to nursing practice, leadership, and teamwork in different healthcare organizations.

Internal Factors Affecting Curriculum Design

Getting nursing curricula designed involves key internal factors such as organizational processes, curriculum committees, and internal review bodies. Organizational processes like decision-making processes and resource distribution processes also influence new courses. For example, the Duke University School of Nursing administration would determine priorities from the institution’s goals, such as improving ethical practice and leadership within the nursing discipline. Course committees are essential in considering the fit of new courses into the curriculum (Hoare et al., 2024).

These committees are useful in ensuring that any proposed new course, such as Ethics in Advanced Nursing Practices, is still relevant to another course in the program and achieves its maximal learning intents. Teachers, department chairs, and deans work together to review what is taught, how it is taught, and the pace of the courses to avoid overlap and to integrate the curriculum.

University committees, academic councils, or faculty review committees to ensure that proposed new courses meet educational standards and accreditation. For example, at Duke, such committees would determine whether the course content met the CCNE or the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) standards. These processes assist in checking and ensuring that the curriculum meets all the requirements of a current and quality curriculum in nursing education.

External Factors Impacting Curriculum Design

Funding, stakeholders, and other regulatory and accrediting bodies thus exert a major influence over the curriculum as they determine the resources available, the direction to be followed, and acceptable norms and standards. Since funding determines the availability of resources to implement new courses, it impacts course development. For example, obtaining financing can define the extent to which one can attract and recruit faculty, implement technologies for education, or create unique learning environments.

Funds from other healthcare institutions, foundations, or grants from the government can also inform curriculum focus, for example, new trends in healthcare, such as ethics in the practice of advanced nursing or the use of new technologies. Community members or a community of practice, consisting of healthcare facilities, registered nurses, prospective employers, and nursing associations, contribute to determining the knowledge and skills required in practice. This way, the curriculum adopted by the institution is relevant to the hospitals, clinics, and professional bodies that practice modern clinical practice.

For instance, hospital affiliation ensures that students get practical experience through internships endorsed by the course’s ethical and leadership frameworks. Governmental and other bodies such as the CCNE and AACN establish important requirements for curricula. These agencies help the program keep up with the academic and national standards for nursing education (Lewis et al., 2022). For instance, to get accreditation from certain approving bodies, ethical considerations and leadership might be included to prepare students to face challenges they are likely to meet in practice. They determine what should be taught, how it should be taught, and how students should be assessed.

Mission, Philosophy, and Framework

This paper demonstrates how a nursing program’s mission, philosophy, and framework and its parent institution influence the design of the curriculum by linking educational objectives with institutional values, priorities, and goals. The mission of Duke University’s School of Nursing focuses on promoting health equity and social justice and sustaining forward-thinking excellence in education, practice, and research (Duke University School of Nursing, n.d.). This mission directs the curriculum to be culturally sensitive, promote ethical leadership, and incorporate evidence-based practice to prepare students to address patient’s needs and advocate for health disparities populations.

For instance, offering an Ethics in Advanced Nursing Practices course demonstrates the institution’s attainment of its goal of awarding highly ethical nurse leaders ready to deal with the moral issues arising in health care systems. The philosophy of the program at Duke is to give life to the concept of a progressive and research-based nursing education. This philosophy fosters the incorporation of the findings and novel technologies in the syllabuses so that students acquire modern knowledge to address current healthcare issues (Duke University School of Nursing, n.d.).

This philosophy is reflected in the proposed course due to the focus on critical thinking and clinical reasoning in ethical decision-making in patient care. The program’s framework also determines how courses are structured to foster leadership, professionalism, and patient-centeredness. For instance, incorporating ethical theories in clinical and leadership-based classes correlates with the school’s mission of positioning nursing as the leader in healthcare change.

Collaboration among Internal and External Stakeholders

Efficient and quality curriculum development involves the faculty, administrators, committees, and other units within the institution and those externally touching on the health field, such as healthcare facilities and regulatory and professional bodies. This collaboration guarantees that the curriculum meets academic requirements as well as the healthcare needs of society. Course content, structure, and delivery are a product of the internal stakeholders, which include faculty members and department heads. They have experience teaching nursing and clinical experience. Curriculum committees evaluate the extent to which new courses conform to the curriculum learning outcomes and program objectives.

The healthcare system comprises external stakeholders like hospitals and clinics to ensure that the curriculum offered by the institutions fits the healthcare system. Their input contributes to the fact that skills and competencies captured in the training mirror the field clinical environments. Professional nursing organizations such as the CCNE and the AACN set course outcomes, content, assessment, and clinical practicum site requirements that the curriculum must meet (Lewis et al., 2022). The ANA and NLN offer information on current trends and standards in nursing that will help update the curriculum as needed. A lack of synergy between these groups can result in curriculum disparity, student unemployment, lack of accreditation, and noncompliance with set regulations. This can lead to poor education outputs, reduced labor market prospects of graduates, and attainability of accreditation loss, which all negatively impact the program’s reputation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, developing a new course in Ethics in Advanced Nursing Practice for the Duke University ABSN program strengthens the curriculum by addressing critical ethical issues nurses face in modern healthcare. The course is developed in cooperation with faculty members and curriculum committees, as well as with healthcare institutions and accrediting bodies, to ensure its relevance and rigor and meet the program’s mission of enhancing health equity and leadership. Integrating this course into the curriculum improves students’ ability to navigate complex clinical and ethical situations, fostering future nurse leaders. By addressing the need for ethical competence in nursing, the course prepares students to provide high-quality, patient-centered care while adhering to professional standards and promoting social justice.

References

American Nurses Association. (n.d.). Ethics and human rights. American Nurses Association. https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/

Andersson, H., Svensson, A., Frank, C., Rantala, A., Holmberg, M., & Bremer, A. (2022). Ethics education to support ethical competence learning in healthcare: An integrative systematic review. BMC Medical Ethics, 23(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-022-00766-z