URI's baccalaureate program is designed to prepare students with academic and personal potential to become professional nurses. It aims to develop mature, well-informed graduates who will meet the challenges of health care delivery and continued learning. Nursing is a creative activity that provides human services for the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and care of the ill. It is interdependent with all other disciplines concerned with health. Nursing knowledge is viewed as a unique synthesis drawn from the humanities and the natural, biomedical, and social sciences.
Students use a systems perspective as a conceptual base to nursing.
This conceptual approach to nursing incorporates the whole person and his or her environment with the nursing process. Our nursing curriculum enhances students' ability to function professionally in community and home care settings, in keeping with the changes in the health care system. Clinical practicums include experience in numerous community agencies, schools, nursing homes, clinics, physicians' offices, and hospitals throughout Rhode Island. Priority is given to students with strong academic records and positive recommendations from faculty in introductory nursing courses. Students with college study in another major or some nursing study in another baccalaureate program and a minimum of 45 completed credits, if accepted by the University, may be admitted directly into the College of Nursing.