Rationale

Master’s-prepared nurses build on the competencies gained in a baccalaureate nursing program by developing a deeper understanding of nursing and the related sciences needed to fully analyze, design, implement, and evaluate nursing care. These nurses are well prepared to provide care to diverse populations and cohorts of patients in clinical and community-based systems. The master’s-prepared nurse integrates findings from the sciences and the humanities, biopsychosocial fields, genetics, public health, quality improvement, health economics, translational science, and organizational sciences for the continual improvement of nursing care at the unit, clinic, home, or program level. Master’s-prepared nursing care reflects a more sophisticated understanding of assessment, problem identification, design of interventions, and evaluation of aggregate outcomes than baccalaureate-prepared nursing care.

Students being prepared for direct care roles will have graduate-level content that builds upon an undergraduate foundation in health assessment, pharmacology, and pathophysiology. Having master’s-prepared graduates with a strong background in these three areas is seen as imperative from the practice perspective. It is recommended that the master’s curriculum preparing individuals for direct care roles include three separate graduate-level courses in these three content areas. In addition, the inclusion of these three separate courses facilitates the transition of these master’s program graduates into the DNP advanced-practice registered-nurse programs.

Master’s-prepared nurses understand the intersection between systems science and organizational science in order to serve as integrators within and across systems of care. Care coordination is based on systems science (Nelson et al., 2008). Care management incorporates an understanding of the clinical and community context, and the research relevant to the needs of the population. Nurses at this level use advanced clinical reasoning for ambiguous and uncertain clinical presentations, and incorporate concerns of family, significant others, and communities into the design and delivery of care. Master’s-prepared nurses use a variety on, and health promotion strategies. Knowledge from information sciences, health communication, and health literacy are used to provide care to multiple populations. These nurses are able to