Creating a curriculum for the 21st century.
The curriculum that was described in this article reflects our school's broad and bold definition of what constitutes knowledge in nursing. It also represents the faculty's dedication to a creative approach to education and practice, as well as a commitment to change in an age of change. It portrays a desire to design education that would develop the full range of human potential, the full potential of the university, and incorporate the full range of approaches to human problems. Our current changing practice environment underscores the challenges and complexities facing faculties and student nurses in pursuit of relevant and useful theoretic and clinical content. In addition, those of us who have practiced in the psychiatric field know that the care of clients with psychiatric problems requires heterogeneous approaches to treatment that vary with respect to type, frequency, severity, and chronicity of their conditions. We know that the impact of certain conditions is linked to age and developmental status, and we know that the effects of deviations from health are mediated by numerous features of ecology, including poverty, job and family instability, parental stress, social isolation, and community violence. As a result, nursing interventions and their outcomes no longer can be viewed in terms of simple cause and effect relationships; nor can they be thought of as occurring in the familiar settings of hospitals or institutions. For better or worse, those facilities have closed. This reality and the enormous complexities of human science speak to the multidimensional factors involved in the construction of new and different models of teaching and learning within a comprehensive conceptual framework to guide both learning and practice.
Mohr
W K
WK
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia, USA.
Naylor
M D
MD
D003479:Curriculum; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005544:Forecasting; D006808:Humanism; D006801:Humans; D008389:Marketing of Health Services; D009742:Nursing Theory; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D010687:Philosophy, Nursing; D016730:Program Development; D011568:Psychiatric Nursing / Q000193:education* / Q000458:organization & administration