Course Descriptions

NUR 500 Transcultural Health Care
This course explores meanings and expressions of health, illness, caring, and healing transculturally. Focus is on understanding and developing professional competence in caring for individuals, families, groups, and communities with diverse cultural backgrounds. Culture is examined as a pervasive, determining “blueprint” for thought and action throughout the human health experience. Patterns of human interaction that foster health and quality of life are analyzed, and health destroying patterns of interaction, e.g., stereotyping, discrimination, and marginalization, are examined and submitted to moral and ethical reflection. (36 hours of practice experience)

NUR 501 Transcultural Care Systems
In this course, organizations are viewed as cultural systems that are complex and adaptive, where continuous change and unpredictability rule the development and course of evolution. The importance of relationships, the role of self-organization, the processes of emergence and co-evolution are explored via readings and discussions. Attendance at a local, national, and/or international nursing leadership conference is mandatory. Dialogue and networking with a variety of nursing leaders to understand the context of transcultural health care organizations are expected.

NUR 503 Transcultural Health, Families, and the Life Cycle
The major curriculum concepts of individuals, health, nursing, and society are developed further in this course as the function of individuals living in families and in communities is explored. Content about systems, communication, small group, and nursing theories is applied to family constellation. The influence of the multigenerational family is examined in terms of culture, belief system, roles, health care patterns, values, and goals. Specific concepts related to values and culture are expanded and applied to the more complex social structures of traditional and nontraditional families as they interact in and with society. (36 hours of practice experience)

NUR 505 Theoretical Foundations for Advanced Nursing Practice
This course focuses on nursing science and nursing theory as foundational to advanced transcultural nursing practice. Philosophical underpinnings of different theoretical and research traditions in nursing are compared and related to the provision of culturally competent care in diverse communities. Nursing science is emphasized as a process of theory advancement and as an accumulating body of nursing knowledge. (36 hours of practice experience)

NUR 510 Advanced Community Health Nursing I: Health As Membership; Living in Community
This course focuses on persons, families, and groups living in relationship. Emphasis is on applying the core functions of community/public health—assessment, policy development, and assurance. Principles of epidemiology, population demographics, and culture care are integrated into community focused health care delivery models. Power structures within dominant social systems are analyzed and critiqued with regard to resource access and distribution among underserved populations. (36 hours of practice experience)

NUR 511 Advanced Community Health Nursing II: Emerging Models of Care in Diverse Communities
Emphasis is on the application of public/community health theory and research in providing health care to populations and communities. Essential public health services are assessed for adequacy in meeting community health needs and addressing transcultural health goals. The impact of diversity, privilege, resource limits, and globalization add depth and reality to local and global community health concerns, patterns of health, suffering, and health care provisioning. (Prereq.: NUR 510) (72 hours of practice experience)

NUR 520 Research Methods in Nursing
Through a combination of literature review, field experience, and class discussion, research methods relevant to the exploration of culture and health will be examined. Class topics will include formulating study questions to explore collective foundations of meaning and explanation in health and illness, practice in data collection procedures of field research, and issues of interpretation and analysis in qualitative research. (Prereq.: college-level statistics course) (36 hours of practice experience)

NUR 521 Transformational Nursing Leadership
This course emphasizes transformational nursing leadership and management in partnership with diverse groups. Transcultural competence is lifted up as significant to the evolving leadership and planning skills needed in emerging care systems. Opportunities for students to engage in designing relevant models of care delivery are woven into clinical practica. (36 hours of practice experience)

NUR 523 Theory, Research, and Practice Seminar
The conceptualization, investigation, and application of nursing knowledge will be critiqued with particular focus on its contribution to developing practice in transcultural community health care. Through reflection and dialogue, which includes professional experience of practice contexts, as well as theoretical and research literature, students will formulate a transcultural nursing model of care. (36 hours of practice experience)

NUR 525 Graduate Field Project
This course focuses on the application and integration of knowledge to a student-selected issue or topic of concern relevant to transcultural nursing, community health nursing, and/or transformational nursing leadership. This course focuses on a written report of the student’s project that has been developed in the nursing core. Relevant coursework is integrated into the project and the final written report. Plans for disseminating the report for public and professional use are encouraged. Students will defend the project to their graduate committee (major faculty adviser and two readers) and invited guests at the time of completion. (144 hours of practice experience)

NUR 530 The Power of Ritual and Ceremony for Transformation
In this course, the student will explore ritual and ceremony from a transcultural perspective. Attention will be focused on rituals and ceremonies in specific cultures and religions, and in the modern American medical system that sustains its own rituals. In some cultures, formal or informal religious practices may be integral to the ritual of ceremony and healing. In modern American culture, the perceived division between the mind, body, and spirit has led to ritual and ceremony being considered adjunctive to the scientific approach ritual and ceremony into their lives and health care practices. Students will also discuss the meaning of ritual and ceremony to their own lives and professional practice.

NUR 532 Transcultural Healing Practices
This course will introduce students to complementary healing practices including the historical and cultural contexts in which they developed. Students will discuss the philosophical underpinnings of therapeutic systems and paradigms of healing in selected complementary therapies: music therapy, traditional Chinese medicine, mind-body healing, spiritual and faith practices, energy healing practices, movement therapies, homeopathy, manual therapies, and nutrition and nutritional supplements.

NUR 541 The Politics of Health Care
This course will explore how health and illness are related to inequities in society and dynamics of power in systems of health care. The following issues will be examined in the course: How widening gaps in the distribution of wealth diminish the health of all members of society; how social inequities become medicalized as health disparities, how an emphasis on profit in health care affects the distribution of healing resources in the population, and what strategies the poor and powerless employ to gain access to health care resources. This course will include an optional study abroad experience in Guatemala. (72 hours of practice experience)

NUR 562 Walking the Truth: Culture, Gender, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Sub-Saharan Africa
This course explores the influence of cultural values and gender roles on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in sub-Saharan Africa. The social determinants of health and illness—economic realities, education levels, governmental policies, access to technology, and the competence of health care providers—are examined in relation to the unequal burdens of suffering and disease evident in Africa. Leadership skills that promote MDG achievement in local, regional, and national contexts are identified and applied through experiential practical learning activities.

NUR 599 Topics
Study of selected topics that are not treated extensively through current course offerings. Specific topics will be published prior to registration.

BUS 520 Management of the Health Care Organization
This course provides an overview of the key organizational and behavioral concepts that underlie effective management practices in health care organizations. It addresses both the theory and practice of effective management. The course will emphasize the importance of addressing the expectations, needs, and performances of people in organizations, and recognizes the role of the internal, external, and global cultures that impact organizational structure, behavior, and change.

ECO 520 Economics of Health Care in a Global Community
At the end of the class, students will be better able to apply economic concepts to the health systems of both the United States and other parts of the world. The focus will be on the public policy aspects of the health care system, e.g., issues of access and cost.