Master of Science in Nursing - Informatics

This graduate-level course introduces students to the historical development, structure, operation, and current and future directions of the major components of the American health care delivery system. It reviews the historical evolution of the health care system's features and examines the ways in which health care services are organized and delivered, the influences that affect health care public policy decisions, factors that determine priorities for the allocation of health care resources, and the relationship of health care costs to measurable benefits. The course enables students to assess the role of organized efforts to influence health policy formulation, and the contributions of medical technology, research findings, and societal values on our evolving health care delivery system.

Required Text Book:

• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) - 9781433805615
• Health Care USA: Understanding Its Organization and Delivery (9th Edition) - 978-1284114676

This graduate-level course in theory and research for advanced nursing practice is designed to develop and refine the knowledge and skills necessary to critique theory and research from nursing and related fields. The focus of this course is on the examination of the research process with applicability to advanced nursing practice. Emphasis is placed on the critique, evaluation, and utilization of nursing and related research that applies to advanced nursing practice and a comprehensive approach to care. Ethical and technological aspects of scholarly inquiry are explored. This course supports the development of the research design, theoretical framework, methods of analysis, and creating an abstract for the capstone project proposal.

Required Text Book:

• American Psychological Association (6th Edition) - 978-1-4338-0561-5
• Advanced nursing research: From theory to practice (2nd Edition) - 978-1284048308

This graduate-level course provides an in-depth study of cultural diversity, delineating ethnocultural congruent health-care practices in a pluralistic society. Assessment, planning, and interventions for health promotion and maintenance, illness and disease prevention, health restoration, and health policy are explored. The course examines the meanings of health and illness across ethnocultural groups and communities.

Required Text Book:

• Transcultural Health Care: A Culturally Competent Approach, 4th Edition - 9780803637054
• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) - 9781433805615

This graduate-level course focuses on the legal and ethical rights, responsibilities, and obligations of the practicing nurse in a changing health environment. It is intended to provide graduate nursing students with the theory, knowledge and application necessary to deal with pressing legal and ethical issues in nursing practice. Learners will develop a framework for working through increasingly complex legal and ethical issues that affect nurses. This framework and broadened perspective will help practitioners recognize and respond to dilemmas within diverse health care settings and nursing roles. This course will provide an overview of regulatory action and the legislative and judicial processes, enabling learners to become familiar with changes affecting the health care system such as patient rights, technological advances, and managed care. Within an ethical framework, ethical and professional issues affecting the individual, the practice of professional nursing, and the profession will be explored.

Required Text Book:

• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) - 9781433805615
• Legal and Ethical Issues in Nursing, 6th Edition - 9780133355871
• Legal and Ethical Issues for Health Professionals - 3rd Edition - 9781449672119

This graduate-level course covers the history of healthcare informatics, current issues, basic informatics concepts, and health information management applications. Health informatics is the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care. It deals with the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health care settings. Health informatics tools include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems. This course focuses on the application of health care informatics from a nursing perspective. Based on the Foundation of Knowledge model, this course demonstrates how nursing and healthcare informatics relate to knowledge acquisition, knowledge processing, knowledge generation, knowledge dissemination, and feedback, all of which build the science of nursing.

Required Text Book:

• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) - 9781433805615
• Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge (4th Edition) - 978-1284121247

This graduate-level course will help nurse managers to understand and implement processes for management of financial issues in health care. Finance is a complicated and frequently confusing part of providing healthcare in the United States. Regulatory bodies, multiple payer sources, and complicated reimbursement schedules are just of few of the things that contribute to the state of healthcare finance in the 21st century. This course will introduce the concepts of reimbursement based on meeting the needs of the client rather than meeting the bottom line. Budgetary considerations, cash flow, cost to benefit analysis, and salaries are discussed in a forthright and comprehensive manner. Understanding how clients view healthcare and then understanding the role of healthcare payment will assist nursing leaders to make quality decisions that will benefit the patient and the facility. This course will assist the nurse manager to implement financial considerations into quality patient care.

Required Text Book:

• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) - 9781433805615
• Financial Management for Nurse Managers: Merging the Heart with the Dollar, 2nd Edition - 9780763757137

This course imparts valuable insight into the planning, organizing, and controlling of user services. Managing the essential technologies as well as the management of the traditional information systems development process is explored. This course also incorporates investigation into organizational learning curves, dealing with vendors, budgeting, accounting, management reporting, and legal considerations of information systems (IS). Each module in this course melds textbook material with additional content from external resources. This course addresses issues and strategies enabled through creative exercises and brief research projects designed to help students synthesize new learning and apply the concepts presented. Each encourages critical thinking about the subject matter. A broad range of analysis and synthesis skills, such as inference, recognition of assumptions, deduction, evaluation of arguments, and interpretation are enlisted through such project-oriented assignments. Investigating articles and case studies that present timely and different approaches to information systems management assists in emulating real MIS challenges. Discussion questions afford online interactive students the opportunity to exchange ideas with peer learners on current topics concerning this dynamic field.

Required Text Book:

• Business Driven Information Systems (5th Edition) - 978-0073402987
• The leadership challenge: how to make extraordinary things happen in organizations (5th Edition) - 978-0470651728

In this course we will provide you with both a strong foundation for understanding what is meant by information technology and the business side of managing it. We will explain information technology in the context of organizations and their use of it. This course focuses on business pressures and the strategies used to counter them, especially through the use of Web-based strategic information systems.

Required Text Book:

• Management: Digital strategies for Insight, Action, and Sustainable Performance (10th Edition) - 978-1118897782

The relationship between technology-based products and the consumers of these products comes under investigation in this course. This course also teaches methods for designing, developing, and delivering technology-based products that can solve real-world problems. Students will examine best practices for integrating technology solutions and metrics managers can apply to measure the return on an IT investment. Throughout the course, students will learn skills they can use to increase their own creative skills.

Required Text Book:

• The Management of Technology and Innovation: A Strategic Approach - 978-0538478229

This course will build on previous informatics knowledge to apply problem-solving skills to complex nursing informatics problems. Healthcare organizations face many issues that will be covered in this course including interoperability, integration, health information exchange, and electronic health records. Applying successful solutions through the lens of quality, meaningful use, education, public health and evidence-based practice will be emphasized. 

Required Text Book:

• American Psychological Association (6th Edition) - 978-1-4338-0561-5
• Handbook of informatics for nurses and healthcare professionals (5th Edition) - 978-0-13-257495-2
• Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge (4th Edition) - 978-1284121247

This graduate level course focuses on the implementation of the specialist nurse role through the application of theoretical concepts and strategies for a selected learner population in an academic, legal, or clinical setting. Emphasis is on effective communication and sensitivity to varying needs of the learner based on cultural and educational background. The specialist nurse role will be analyzed and applied in collaboration with a master's prepared nurse preceptor with experience in the specialty. Evidence-based strategies will be developed into a comprehensive activity or teaching plan to engage learners in active learning and implemented to meet mutually determined outcomes. Activities might include, but are not limited to: creating toolkit of resource references, developing a PowerPoint®   or Prezi® for presentation, creating a survey to measure satisfaction with activity, attending professional meetings, writing a publishable article, presenting a topic to patients, creating a webinar, delivering a training module to staff nurses, developing software to meet a need, creating a Review of Literature, developing an advocacy agenda, or proposing a change in process or procedure. This course requires 180 hours of practicum experience. PLEASE NOTE: PRIOR to registering for this class, all required practicum documents must be submitted to the Nursing Practicum Center classroom and approved by the NP Coordinator. Please contact npcoordinator@aspen.edu if you have questions. 

Required Text Book:

• Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.) - 9781433805615

The purpose of this individualized learning experience is to enable you to develop an original comprehensive nursing research project on a topic of professional or personal interest. This project-based course is intended to enable you to research, design and develop a substantial original applied project of your own authorship. This project is intended to encourage the application of theories, principles, and processes that you have studied in the Aspen graduate courses to an actual nursing related problem or issue of interest and relevance to you in your professional activities. PLEASE NOTE: Students cannot start the Capstone concurrently with the Practicum, as the Capstone is based upon the data collected from the Practicum.

Prerequisite:

• N586