Thus, as client needs shift, individual courses can be adapted within the overall framework. The health assessment, pathophysiology, and clinical drug therapy courses provide the knowledge and foundation necessary for making clinically effective decisions with clients in a variety of settings. The research course enhances critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making skills. The leadership and role transition courses offer opportunities to synthesize nursing competencies for systems management and to critically analyze factors which shape nursing practice and effect change in the health care delivery system. An open perspective recognizing the dependence of health on the environment and the importance of creative flexibility within a rapidly changing health care delivery system.
All living systems are whole and are made up of interdependent interacting parts.
Clients are living, open systems. Thus, a continual exchange in communication occurs and a change in one system component affects all parts of the system. Systems are arranged in hierarchal order. As a result, all systems components are part of larger systems. Humans, composed of numerous body systems and subsystems, are part of greater system components including families, groups, organizations, communities, and societies, which are subsystems of the environment.