Vision, Mission and History

The mission of the CNHS nursing programs is to teach, conduct research, and serve the community. The goals are to:

• prepare qualified men and women for leadership roles in basic and advanced professional nursing practice in a rapidly changing, multicultural, multiethnic, global environment;
   
• promote, expand and validate the scientific base of nursing knowledge and practice through the discovery, organization and transmission of research-based knowledge, skills and values;
   
• collaborate with local, national and international health care agencies in promoting excellence through cost-effective, accessible, equitable and humanistic health care delivery systems for divergent individuals, families and communities.

The undergraduate and graduate nursing programs are designed to prepare professional nurses who can lead, coordinate, and oversee the delivery of accessible, affordable, high-caliber, comprehensive, culturally competent, humanistic, and holistic health care. Graduates are prepared to function within the contexts of a cost-conscious, consumer-oriented, litigious, highly mobile, multiethnic, global environment, and a competitive, profit-oriented, and highly technological health care system. In addition, graduates are poised on the threshold of the 21st century, utilizing their vision and expertise to respond to the inevitable changes and challenges in technology and resources for international health care delivery.

Philosophy of the CNHS Nursing Programs

SON faculty subscribe to the mission, purposes and tenets of Florida International University. The mission of the CNHS nursing programs are reflective of the University's mission of (a) providing higher education to qualified students; (b) preparing them for careers within their chosen community; (c) enriching their intellectual experiences; (d) cultivating effective members of a technology-based global society; and (e) providing an opportunity for them to absorb from and contribute to Southeast Florida's cultural, economic, social, and urban environments.

The CNHS nursing programs advance the University's mission by preparing qualified men and women as beginning nurse generalists who can function in a variety of roles in diverse health care settings. The nursing programs further advance the University's mission by preparing qualified professional nurses for advanced nursing roles. Advanced practice nurses collaborate with clients and other health care professionals in various settings to provide specialized, competent, theoretical and research-based practice. The mission of the CNHS nursing programs are predicated on the faculty's beliefs regarding humans, health, environment, and nursing. Faculty members of the SON believe the following:

HUMANS are unique, integrated, holistic beings possessing inherent dignity and worth. Humans are open systems who interact, interrelate, and are interdependent with the environment. Throughout the life span, humans strive to achieve optimal well being though an interactive process between internal and external environments utilizing adaptation. Adaptation is a response to stressors that impact humans' physiological, psychosocial, developmental, cultural and spiritual dimensions.

HEALTH is an individually perceived dynamic state of well-being and is conditioned by the human's ability to adapt to internal and external environmental stressors. Health is characterized by an integrated physiological, psychosocial, developmental, cultural and spiritual functioning resulting in optimal use of resources to minimize health alterations. A human being's health at any given point in time is viewed as a point on the health-illness continuum represented by optimal well being at one end and death at the opposite end.

ENVIRONMENT is composed of two components, the internal and external systems. Interchange occurs between humans' environmental systems. This interchange is impacted by humans' internal environment that consists of physiological, psychosocial, developmental, cultural and spiritual dimensions. The external environmental system consists of groups of humans united by common familial, geographic, socioeconomic, political, spiritual and cultural characteristics. Societal groups within the external environment such as families, communities, institutions and nations are interrelated and interdependent. The viability of any individual or societal group is a consequence of the complementary performance of societal roles within each group in adapting to environmental stressors.

NURSING is a humanistic professional service that assists client systems such as individuals, families, and communities to utilize their adaptive responses to any potential or actual environmental stressor at any point on the health illness continuum. As a profession, nursing is committed to assist client systems in the promotion, maintenance, restoration, and/or rehabilitation of health or to face death with dignity. Nursing is a dynamic profession impacting on stressors and forces within the environment. Conversely, environmental stressors and forces impact the goals and direction of nursing.

The faculty also believes that nursing is actualized through the interactive decision making steps of the nursing process. The nursing process is a theory-based, systematic, and holistic approach to nurse-client interaction and includes the ability to receive, translate, and relay information. Nursing process is translated into action through the overlapping professional nursing roles inherent in nurse-client system interactions. These professional nursing roles are direct care provider, teacher-learner, collaborator, client advocate, change agent, leader, and research consumer.

The faculty believes that the baccalaureate degree in nursing (BSN) is the minimum requirement for entry into professional practice.  Baccalaureate-prepared nurses are generalists who apply conceptsand methods of logical inquiry from the liberal arts, sciences and nursing in their practice.  The essential strategies and skills developed from applying concepts and inquiry methods from these disciplines are critical thinking, decision-making, and problem solving.  Professional nurses utilize inter-disciplinary knowledge and the nursing process to develop and implement a holistic plan of care to assist client systems in adapting to potential and actual environmental stressors.

The faculty believes that one outcome of a baccalaureate education in nursing is a nurse who is disposed to consider, in a thoughtful way, the problems and subjects that come within his/her range of experience. The faculty believes that the baccalaureate-prepared nurse will have developed from the arts, sciences and nursing, the ethics and methods of logical inquiry, along with critical thinking skills and reasoning strategies needed to apply those methods. Fundamental to the ethics and methods of inquiry is the ability to think and reason to and from evidence in a deliberative, thoughtful, and directive manner. Such abilities are considered the essence of critical thinking, decision-making, and problem solving found in nursing practice.

In nursing education and practice, the teaching-learning process is a dynamic, ongoing, lifelong, and complex phenomenon that leads to changes in cognitive, affective and psychomotor behavior. Requisites for effective teaching and learning are multi-dimensional, requiring the teacher to adapt instructional philosophies and methodologies to the individual's learning styles and needs.

Research is an integral component of professional nursing practice. Contemporary society is characterized by new discoveries in the arts, humanities, sciences, and technology, which can produce rapid changes. These rapid changes are associated with information that nurses must interpret through research. Research guides the professional nurse in the provision of holistic care through the nursing process. Nursing research leads to the refinement of theories that serve as a base of a substantive body of knowledge unique to nursing.

The faculty believes that a master’s education in nursing (MSN) is built upon a baccalaureate nursing major and provides opportunities for students to acquire a core of advanced knowledge, and clinical expertise in a specialty area of nursing practice. Individuals with a master's degree are prepared to function in advanced practice nursing roles, such as care provider, collaborator, advocate, change agent, educator, beginning researcher, leader, consultant, and case manager. These advanced practice nurses should not only be aware of prevailing health and nursing issues, but be able to exert a positive influence in resolving those issues. Graduates must have a comprehensive understanding of and beginning competence in research. The faculty believes that a master’s education in nursing is the foundation for doctoral studies in nursing.