Nursing

Advisor: Becky Le

The program is designed to enhance the nurse’s career-long learning by focusing on the expected competencies of a professional nurse. The BSN program curriculum and practice experiences allow
opportunities for engagement in academic-practice partnerships that improve expertise and increase the overall quality of care within populations. The program builds on and expands established nursing knowledge, skills, and attitudes by providing research-based nursing science, principles of nursing leadership, and a liberal arts foundation.

Mission:

The mission of the Lyon College BSN undergraduate degree program is to provide associate-level nursing graduates with an educational foundation grounded in the liberal arts and the expert practice of nursing. The nurse earning the BSN is prepared to be a professional health care practitioner who provides compassionate care based on scholarship and evidence, and who serves as the link between the individual, family, community, population, and the complex health care system across the lifespan. The heart of the graduate BSN student is to improve the physical, emotional, and spiritual lives of those in their care while maintaining the highest standards of clinical judgment, values, scholarship, quality, safety, and leadership.

Program Goals:

• Provide a well-rounded curriculum in liberal arts and sciences as a foundation for the advancement of nursing and career-long learning;

• Provide a nursing program designed to meet the present and future needs of complex healthcare systems by preparing RNs at the baccalaureate level for the improvement of measurable health outcomes through evidence-based practice.
• Facilitate students' expansion and mastery of knowledge, skills, and dispositions essential for clinical effectiveness and individual performance.
• Promote faculty and student practice experiences relating to the promotion of health in diverse individuals, families, communities, and populations.

Program Learning Outcomes:

• Clinical Judgement: students will use reliable evidence from multiple perspectives to inform safe nursing practice and make reasonable clinical decisions.
• Holism: students will synthesize knowledge from nursing and a liberal education in the planning and provision of holistic nursing care across the lifespan and continuum of healthcare environments.
• Quality and Safety: students will employ the nursing process, scholarship, patient care technologies, and healthcare informatics to support safe nursing practice.
• Interprofessional Collaboration: students will utilize interpersonal and interprofessional communication in collaboration for the promotion of optimal health for individuals, families, communities, and populations.
• Core Values: students will apply ethical and legal standards of professional nursing including advocacy, professional accountability, and responsibility in the provision of professional nursing care.
• Systems Based Leadership: students will integrate leadership and management skills, and knowledge of health care policy, regulatory processes, and cost effectiveness for the improvement of quality care and patient safety
• Determinants of Health: students will incorporate principles of comprehensive health assessment, health education, health promotion, cultural competency, and disease prevention in person centered nursing care of individuals and populations from birth to death.
• Respectful Care: students will value caring, respect, dignity, hope, and the human spirit in the provision of professional nursing care.

Pre-Nursing Entry Pathway

The Pre-Nursing entry pathway prepares students for admission to an RN licensure program and completion of the BSN degree. Based on the completion of admission criteria, students may begin Lyon College courses before, during, or after entering a nursing licensure program. 40 block credits will transfer from the RN licensure program. The early admissions program will accelerate the number of BSN prepared nurses in our workforce while maximizing the graduate’s eligibility for diverse employment options.

AAS Nursing students will be eligible for early admission into Lyon College’s RN to BSN program based on the review and/or confirmation of:

• Acceptance into Lyon College at Lyon College’s sole discretion
• Official Transcript of AAS Nursing Program in Progress
• Completion of all general education requirements for the associate degree with a cumulative GPA of 2.75, and 9 credits of nursing courses with a cumulative GPA of 2.0 or higher.
• Students will sign a “Release of Information” agreement so that both institutions are able to view and receive relevant student information.

Students will be eligible for continued concurrent enrollment based on:

• Continued Good Standing within the AAS Nursing program: Any failure or loss of "student in good standing" status in the AAS Nursing courses (any earned grades below C) will result in the automatic withdrawal from the AAS-BSN concurrent enrollment curriculum.

• Academic good standing within the RN to BSN program based on the criteria established in Lyon College’s Catalog and the School of Nursing’s Student Handbook.

Graduation eligibility for the RN-BSN program is based on:

• AAS Conferred Degree. Students must first graduate from the AAS Nursing program.
• Completion of all BSN courses and success on the NCLEX-RN.
• Proof of licensure as a registered nurse must be supplied to the School of Nursing at Lyon College prior to the student being awarded a BSN degree.
• Completion of the degree requirements for the BSN with a cumulative GPA of 2.75
   

Post-Nursing Entry

The degree completion program at Lyon College is designed for nurses who have already gained the RN qualification and professional licensure. 40 block credits will transfer from the RN licensure program.

Prospective students will be eligible for admission into Lyon College’s RN to BSN program based on the review and/or confirmation of:

• Unencumbered valid RN license
• Cumulative GPA of 2.75 and an Associate or Diploma Degree with a major in Nursing
• Students who do not meet the minimum GPA requirement, or have not taken NCLEX, may be admitted on academic probation based on the formal appeal and consideration of the Nursing Faculty Council.

Students will be eligible for continuing in the RN to BSN program based on:

• Continued unencumbered RN license in the state they are completing the practice experience.
• Students must achieve a 2.0 for each individual major nursing course. If a 2.0 is not achieved, the student is required to repeat the course.
• Students whose cumulative GPA falls below 2.75 will be placed on academic probation for the next term.
• Students who are unable to achieve a 2.0 in any two Nursing courses will be suspended from the Nursing program.
  
  Graduation eligibility for the RN-BSN program is based on:
   
• Completion of the degree requirements for the BSN with a cumulative GPA of 2.75

Note: To graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Lyon College, students must successfully complete a minimum of 120 semester credit hours comprised of our required Nursing Core Requirements (45 hours), the requirements of at least one major (credit hours vary per major), and a selection of our Liberal Arts electives. They must also earn at least a 2.75 cumulative grade point average for all work taken at Lyon College and a 2.75 cumulative grade point average in their major, minor, and concentration.
 

Nursing Core Classes should be taken in sequence.  Exceptions may be made on a case by case basis. 

Quantitative Methods or Calculus may count as credit for Statistics.