Judgment, Inquiry, Engagement, Voice: Reenvisioning an Undergraduate Nursing Curriculum Using a Shared Decision-Making Model

In light of recent recommendations from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Baccalaureate Essentials, the Institute of Medicine's Future of Nursing, and the Carnegie Foundation's Educating Nurses, many schools of nursing are actively redesigning their undergraduate curriculums. Although the process of curricular change is a complicated one, it is also one that can generate faculty excitement, growth, and engagement. This article describes the process used to bring together the entire faculty and other stakeholders in a unique way to create a new undergraduate nursing curriculum that looks to the future and taps university and faculty strengths. The trajectory of the process and important points within that trajectory are discussed. Key products of the process, which served as articulating steps in building the final product, are also considered and how the framework translates into course work. Faculty engagement at each step resulted in a curriculum owned and endorsed by all constituents, a curriculum that breaks down the “silos” that exist not only among courses and clinical experiences but also between the undergraduate educational experience and the more complicated and contingent one of clinical practice.