Vision
Educating nurse leaders to challenge boundaries and build bridges for a healthier world.
Mission Statement
The purpose of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Department of Nursing is to provide a scholarly environment in which faculty and students gain and extend knowledge of health, health care, and the practice of professional nursing. The Department of Nursing is dedicated to accomplishing this mission using traditional, as well as technology-based instructional strategies and a variety of innovative and diverse teaching methods.
The Nursing Department shares the mission of the University and the College by building upon the foundational values of transformative liberal education, inclusivity, and educational excellence.
The select mission of the Nursing Department is to:
- Educate nurses to lead within diverse, complex environments
- Promote health and the public good through ethical leadership, collaboration, and practice
- Contribute to knowledge development for health and nursing
- Serve the broader missions of the College and University
Accepted November 7, 2019
Philosophy
Nursing is a discipline that practices. In our practice, we protect, promote, and optimize health and abilities; prevent illness and injury; alleviate suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response; and advocate in the care of individuals, families, communities, and populations (American Nurses Association, 2003). In our practice, evidence underscores what we do and client education assumes a primary role. In all settings, holism shapes our approach and expands our effectiveness. Although deliberate and purposeful, to improve world health we also remain imaginative and continually search for the unforeseen in our practice.
Nursing is a discipline that leads. Leadership demands us to confront what is and imagine what could be. We hold and articulate our own values and visions with conviction. But in challenging what exists, we also recognize that accomplishing commonly shared goals about health requires collaboration that emerges from inclusive leadership. Inclusion is expanded because professionally educated nurse leaders strive to understand people who are unlike them. Furthermore, leadership insists that we persuade rather than coerce, appreciate the power of mutual information, and live peacefully with irony and paradox. As architects, then, nurse leaders design strategy, influence policy, and advocate for clients in political places. As designers, nurse leaders inspire others to seek environmentally beneficial solutions. Both strategy and inspiration call for knowledge, energy, and courage.
Nursing is a discipline that generates, translates, and applies knowledge. Research, as the process of knowledge generation, uses data that are systematically collected and judiciously interpreted to help us answer questions and construct interventions. We engage in this process with students and colleagues, as well as with other campus and community partners. In this collaboration, where we respect traditional and emerging approaches to knowledge generation, we study issues that influence nursing practice, education, and administration. Our goal is that our research launches wide ranging conversations, contributes to a culture of scholarship in all settings, and advances and promotes world health and well being.
Nursing is a discipline that educates. Because nursing education is a liberal education, faculty and students reflect thoughtfully, commit to innovation, and exhibit a spirit of scholarship. As educators, we value multiple evidence based methods of teaching and honor numerous ways of learning. Nursing education serves society where we strive to practice wisely and try to understand unpredictability and complexity. At the same time, nursing education is a reflective haven where we can disagree, examine, and dialogue in ways that incite and enrich us. Unmistakably, then, preparing students for the workforce is not our only goal as we both serve society and retreat from society in our nursing education. More broadly, improved healthcare outcomes for all people direct our teaching and learning. Freedom and lifetime growth for both students and faculty draw us onward. With our rekindled effort, this nursing education will become more accessible to all.
As we practice, lead, generate knowledge, and educate, several convictions structure our actions. First, the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics for Nurses (Fowler, 2008) guides our decisions. Further, a commitment to a person-centered collaborative relationship secures what we do. This commitment compels us to embrace diverse peoples and understand distinctive lifestyles from all global places and positions. By foregrounding ethics and relationship, a seamless link merges our roles in practice, leadership, knowledge generation, and education. In our blended roles, it is our curiosity and wonder—our search for opportunity and sense of inquiry—our ability to create associations and see patterns—that lead us forward. In this way, we focus on social justice, environmental protection, and the promotion of world health through our engagement with and contributions to the human health experience.
American Nurses Association. (2003). Nursing’s social policy statement (2nd ed.). Silver Spring, MD: Author.
Fowler, M. D. M. (Ed.). (2008). Guide to the Code of Ethics for Nurses: Interpretation and application. Silver Spring, MD: American Nurses Association.
Accepted September 17, 2009
