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Overview

NURS 537: NP Clinical Practicum II is part of the Master of Nursing: Nurse Practitioner (MN-NP) degree and the Post-Masters Diploma: Nurse Practitioner (PMD-NP) program.

In NURS 537, you will complete 200 hours of supervised clinical practicum to support attainment of the Entry-Level Competencies for Nurse Practitioners (College of Registered Nurses of Alberta [CRNA], 2023).

This is the second of four clinical practicums in the program, contributing to the total of 800 required clinical hours. Building on prior learning, you are expected to demonstrate progression in clinical competence, with increasing independence in assessment, diagnostic reasoning, clinical decision-making, and professional practice.

During this practicum, you will provide health promotion, disease prevention, and management of acute, episodic, and chronic conditions for clients across the lifespan and in a variety of settings. You will continue to develop clinical expertise and strengthen your role identity as a nurse practitioner, with increasing autonomy and accountability expected over the course of the practicum.

Emphasis is placed on direct client care experiences to support safe and effective practice. You will complete focused and comprehensive assessments, apply differential diagnosis processes, select and implement appropriate interventions, including diagnostic tests, medications, and referrals, and document care in client health records. You will also engage in critical analysis of organizational and system factors that influence scope of practice, professional accountability, and client outcomes.

Outline

NURS 537 is a paced course delivered over 13 weeks using a blended learning approach that combines asynchronous online learning and regular synchronous virtual sessions. The course consists of the following components:

1. Clinical practicum (200 hours)

In this course you will complete 200 hours of supervised clinical practicum with exposure to clients across the lifespan and in a variety of settings. Clinical faculty, who are licensed nurse practitioners, support evaluation of your clinical performance and role development and engage with you during clinical learning seminars.

Details regarding the clinical practicum experience are provided in the NP Clinical Practicum Guide available in your Brightspace course.

2. Teaching and educational activity

You will develop, present, and critique a teaching activity based on educational principles introduced in the course.

3. Clinical learning seminars

Synchronous clinical learning seminars will be held via Microsoft Teams.

Learning outcomes

After completing this course, you will be able to:

1. Identify client needs and inform diagnoses, analyze and synthesize information from multiple sources including:
   • Health, pharmacologic and social history
   • Review of systems
   • Physical examination
   • Laboratory and diagnostic tests
   • Shared understanding of client’s biophysical, behavioural, cultural, ethnic, and spiritual circumstances, developmental life stage, gender expression, and social determinants of health;

2. Integrate critical thinking and diagnostic reasoning to formulate diagnoses and develop shared management plans;
3. Apply principles of safe prescribing, including awareness of prescription monitoring and reporting programs;
4. Prioritize routine, urgent, emergent, and life-threatening situations and respond appropriately;
5. Evaluate the effectiveness of the management plan and modify as necessary;
6. Develop, deliver, and evaluate client education to support health literacy, capacity, and self-management.

Evaluation

The assessment structure for NURS 537 is based on the following course activities as indicated. Your final grade is based on overall performance across all required assessments. A variety of assessment approaches are used to evaluate achievement of the course learning outcomes.

Materials

Digital course materials

Links to learning materials will be made available in the course.

Textbooks and readings from other Nurse Practitioner courses will be used as appropriate.

Important links

• Student services in FHD
• Support services at СÓÅÊÓƵ
• Faculty of Graduate Studies
• Faculty of Health Disciplines
• Graduate Calendar