Mission Statement: The Buntain School of Nursing of Northwest University prepares graduates to answer their call to serve God throughout the world and lead others by using their professional expertise as nurses.

Offering of the MSN degree is pending approval by the Washington State Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission

Program Learning Outcomes

Scholarly Inquiry

1. Research Methodology: Formulate research questions and hypotheses and determine appropriate research methods that support reliable findings and valid conclusions.
2. Informatics as a lens: Search available data sets for trends and associations that guide the formulation of effective and efficient health care initiatives.
3. Focused clinical exploration: Demonstrate clinical competence rooted in study of the assessment, physiology, pathophysiology, research, and clinical guidelines of a nursing clinical area of focus.

Servant Leadership

4. Ethical debate: Write and provide a scholarly defense for a set of personal ethical and spiritual guidelines for servant leadership in an array of settings and moral dilemmas.
5. Cultural humility: Integrate cultural understanding and sensitivity into health communications, assessments, interventions, programs, and policy in order to lead diverse groups toward the achievement of optimal health outcomes.
6. Educational expertise: Lead others toward wellness and social good through the employment of curriculum development and pedagogical approaches that are sensitive to the developmental, cultural, and motivational characteristics of the target audience.
7. Policy and advocacy: Conceptualize and lead efforts to enhance health-related, public policy.

Outcome Orientation

8. Quality and Safety Improvement: Identify opportunities for quality improvement, safety promotion, and risk management and propose systematic approaches to implement continuous quality improvement efforts.
9. Evidence-based practice: Be adept at finding evidence and applying research recommendations that produce healthy outcomes.

Innovation

10. Research utilization: Apply research recommendations to health care delivery situations and subsequent research agendas.
11. Concept adaptation: Assess the applicability of innovations from different settings and disciplines to current health care delivery opportunities and propose means by which to adapt innovations to new health care settings.
12. Technology utilization: Apply and evaluate the efficacy of technology to the achievement of health goals.

Admission

All students complete an application to Northwest University as part of the admission requirements to the Buntain School of Nursing (BSoN). Prior to admission, students must have:

• A valid, current, and unrestricted license to practice as a Registered Nurse in one or more jurisdiction of the United States.
• A valid, current, and unrestricted license to practice as a Registered Nurse is required within the State where clinical practice experiences are going to be conducted.
• A national criminal background check to confirm the absence of convictions that would limit practice as a Registered Nurse.
• A minimum of 18 months of nursing practice.
• An official transcript from a baccalaureate nursing program, which is accredited by a nursing accrediting agency fully recognized by the national government.
• A GPA of 3.00 or higher in a BSN Degree program. Students with averages below this level will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• Successfully completed a 3-semester credit or equivalent college level course in statistics. (MATH 2003 Introduction to Statistics is available through NU Online courses)

Transfer Credits

• Buntain School of Nursing students may transfer up to 6 credit hours of eligible graduate level coursework (subject to Program Director’s approval) from an accredited institution towards their degree requirements.

Progression

The university catalog and course syllabi prescribe specific standards of academic performance. A course average grade below 80% (B- or 2.7 grade point average on a 4.0 scale) is unacceptable for progression in the Buntain School of Nursing program and unacceptable for graduation. Graduate students are required to maintain a GPA of 3.00 or better through the nursing coursework. This demonstrates a successful synthesis of the course content. Students who fall below a 3.0 GPA may be allowed to progress in the curriculum cycle, but will be placed on academic probation and need to repeat the course prior to entering NURS 5913 Scholarly Project.

Some students may need additional 8-week periods to complete NURS 5913 Scholarly Project. The program is designed to help students make progress on the Scholarly Project in each course taken in the program. Thus, we hope that a delay in completion will be the exception and not the rule. The Master of Science in Nursing students may continue working on their Scholarly Project by registering for successive one-credit courses for up to six months after completion of all other MSN courses.

BSoN Grading Scale

96-100	A
93-95	A-
89-92	B+
85-88	B
80-84	B-
77-79	C+
74-76	C
71-73	C-
68-70	D+
65-67	D
61-64	D-
< 61	F

Academic Probation

Students who fail to maintain satisfactory academic progress towards graduation are placed on Academic Probation. Probation is a temporary status intended to help focus students’ efforts while concentrating the program’s resources to address and remedy the causes of insufficient academic progress. Probation is not intended as a punitive measure but as a warning and a time for necessary improvement. Probation, however, could lead to further academic penalties and financial aid restrictions as deemed necessary by the program or federal guidelines.

Withdrawal

Students who do not achieve a 3.0 GPA will not be allowed to progress into the final course NURS 5913 - Scholarly Project . On occasion students are faced with major health problems or changes in personal circumstances that make progression in the nursing program difficult. Students are encouraged to seek faculty counsel or advice early so that there is opportunity to plan how to best meet their educational goals. In the event that dismissal/withdrawal is recommended by faculty or requested by students, the Buntain School of Nursing Student Affairs Committee will seek to assure that appropriate policies have been followed and that concerns of both student and faculty have been adequately considered.

Clinical/Practice Experiences

The State of Washington requires a minimum of 100 practice experience hours. The MSN has multiple methods to achieve clinical practice experience hours. The easiest way is to take advantage of a clinical immersion experience. Clinical immersion experiences will offer the greatest bulk of available hours.

• Each course is built with a minimum of five clinical practice hours centered on a relevant curricular concept, and up to five hours are allocated for the Scholarly Project Thesis development.
• Some courses offer multiple clinical practice experience project opportunities where student may choose which experience is most beneficial for their learning and adaptable to their life schedule.
• The BSoN encourages all students to take advantage of multiple immersion experiences: Washington D.C., and or a global clinical site.

Scholarly Project

The MSN Scholarly Project will be completed and approved prior to graduation. There is a choice of two approaches:

1. Data collection to elucidate aspects of a phenomenon and generate knowledge
2. Pilot project to evaluate efficacy of a novel intervention or the transfer of an innovation from one context to another

Review, approval, and preparation for the Scholarly Project occurs throughout the MSN program courses:

• Selection of topic (NURS 5113 - Curriculum Development )
• Documentation of research question, hypothesis, and method (NURS 5133 - Research and Innovation for Health Care )
• Integration of scholarly project with clinical experience (NURS 5613 - Implications of Holistic Care on Healthy Outcomes )
• Synthesis of documentation, data access/collection/analysis, conclusions, recommendations, and dissemination (NURS 5913 - Scholarly Project )
• On-going feedback from course faculty with regard to course-specific components of the Scholarly Project

Defense of the Scholarly Project before the Scholarly Project Committee, comprised of the student’s advisor, another nursing faculty member, and an expert reader approved by the Buntain School of Nursing.