The Preferable Future for Nursing Curriculum

Purpose: Nursing education continues to be reinventing the same traditional nursing curriculum of the past.  Although today we call it “concept based nursing curriculum” the content continues to be the same.  The focus of this presentation is to help transition nurse educators into redefining nursing curricula to meet the competencies of the future nurse workforce. What we have done in the past will not meet the workforce needs of the future since the skills of the future are not skills that are being taught in today’s nursing programs. 

Methods: A comprehensive review of literature was conducted to determine the content, courses and teaching strategies that were used to develop nursing curricula during the past 50 years.  A simple checklist was created to review the research and descriptive manuscripts that were published to determine nursing curricula content trends.  The checklist included terms used for courses, content, data provided as well as any analysis or results.

Results: Over 100 manuscripts associated were reviewed with less than 20% providing data or analysis. Thus, research projects associated with nursing curricula and change in the content or courses remains scant.   However, several general themes related to nursing education were evident and provided a framework for nurse educators to consider for changing nursing curricula to meet the needs of the future healthcare delivery systems.

Conclusion: Nurse Educators need to embrace change and develop nursing curricula that is progressive and meets the needs of the ever changing health workforce.  Specific examples include: co-creating inter-professional clinical teaching learning models, enhancing clinical simulation as a substitute for clinical practice, developing consumer based clinical application patient education models, and enhancing active learning strategies that engage students and faculty as team members. 

Nurse Educators need to embrace change and develop nursing curricula that is progressive and meets the needs of the ever changing health workforce.  Specific examples include: co-creating inter-professional clinical teaching learning models, enhancing clinical simulation as a substitute for clinical practice, developing consumer based clinical application patient education models, and enhancing active learning strategies that engage students and faculty as team members. 

Nurse Educators need to embrace change and develop nursing curricula that is progressive and meets the needs of the ever changing health workforce.  Specific examples include: co-creating inter-professional clinical teaching learning models, enhancing clinical simulation as a substitute for clinical practice, developing consumer based clinical application patient education models, and enhancing active learning strategies that engage students and faculty as team members.