Students begin the practice of independent planning and implementation of nursing care for individuals across the life span. Students are introduced to technical nursing interventions. The student will be required to pass written exams, dosage calculations tests, and skills competency tests in this course. A twelve hour off-campus laboratory is included to allow students to apply newly learned skills in an actual patient care setting. This is a three credit-hour course.
Emphasis is given to the mental health aspect of nursing care.
General concepts of mental health and mental illness are introduced with emphasis on adaptive and maladaptive coping with life crises. Specific concepts of mental illness, neuroses, depression and schizophrenia are subsequently introduced. Clinical laboratory experiences focus on crisis intervention using the problem solving process as a model for therapeutic interaction with individual patients in an inpatient mental health setting. This is a four credit-hour course. Students are introduced to complex diagnoses from the nursing diagnosis taxonomy.