This knowledge is acquired within a liberal arts experience which emphasizes honesty, integrity, civility, and a strong sense of personal responsibility. Professional preparation as a nurse includes promotion of lifelong learning, social responsibility, and service. The faculty believe persons are unique, holistic and developing beings with the process and capacity for thinking, feeling, reflecting and choosing. Persons respond to and act upon the constantly changing environment, which is everything that is within and around them. To adapt to this changing environment, people use coping processes which are both innate and learned.
Adaptation occurs as adaptive responses promote integrity and wholeness.
Health is a state and a process of being and becoming an integrated and whole person. Health is a continuum ranging from peak wellness to death. The adaptation level is that point where the person is able to respond positively. A whole person is one with the highest possible fulfillment of human potential. Nursing assists persons, families and communities to examine life and environmental patterns, attach personal meaning to these patterns and choose adaptation.