Elsevier

Nursing Outlook

Volume 50, Issue 6, November–December 2002, Pages 232-237
Nursing Outlook

Education-curriculum
Columbia University's competency and evidence-based Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program*,**

https://doi.org/10.1067/mno.2002.128884Get rights and content

Abstract

New clinical information is being generated faster than practicing clinicians can effectively assimilate it. Since the gold standard of clinical information is evidence-based information, tools and techniques that facilitate both the building of evidence for practice and the application of evidence to practice are essential for practicing clinicians. As such, the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP) program at Columbia University's School of Nursing was reconfigured to incorporate both theoretically based competency evaluation standards and strategies to foster an evidence-based practice approach to clinical care. The purpose of this article is to describe a curriculum and set of learning activities used to foster both development of clinical competency and evidence-based practice in students in the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program.

Nurs Outlook 2002;50:232-237.

Section snippets

The ACNP curriculum

The 47-credit masters ACNP program consists of core courses, supporting sciences, and specialty courses (Table 1).

. ACNP Curriculum

Core Courses
• Theory and Research in Nursing and Applied Science
• Health and Social Policy: Context in Practice and Research
• Introduction to Primary Care
• 3 of the 4 below “intensives” (1 credit courses)
◦ Nutrition through the Lifespan
◦ Interpersonal Violence and Abuse
◦ Behavorial Health Care in Advanced Practice Nursing
◦ Management in Advanced Practice
Supporting

EBP components

ACNP students need to master both building evidence from practice as well as applying evidence to practice. Building evidence from clinical practice includes accumulating individual patient data within a case, assembling cases by an individual practitioner, and analyzing cases between practitioners (ie, across patient populations). Processes of EBP include asking an answerable question; identifying, critically evaluating, and applying relevant research findings; integrating research,

Knowledge and skill acquisition

Both theoretical and practical knowledge are needed to develop clinical expertise.15 Whereas a large part of the theoretical knowledge is gained in the traditional classroom setting, the roles of the clinical preceptor and peer group should be valued in enhancing theoretical, rather than only practical, knowledge. Case presentations are expected to be a peer review-and-discussion exercise. Students are expected to choose a unique patient or treatment and orally present the chief complaint,

Summary

The gold standard of clinical information is evidence-based information. As such, it is important that our NP students understand what EBP is and how to both build evidence from practice and use evidence in practice. In addition, the use of national standards as we have done to assess competencies allows for comparison of outcomes within and among students. This revised curriculum integrates the necessary EBP and competency components to achieve these goals.■

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Cited by (0)

*

NOTE: At the time the article was written, Curran was an assistant professor and director of the Informatics Program at Columbia University School of Nursing, New York. She also was the director of the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP) program at the School of Nursing before W. Dan Roberts assumed the position.

**

Reprint requests: Christine R. Curran, PhD, RN, CNA, 1585 Neil Ave, Columbus, OH 43210-1289.

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