Educating for Complexity In Nursing Practice: A Baccalaureate Curriculum Innovation

Abstract

This expository article describes an overview of salient changes made to a baccalaureate curriculum to meet the ever changing demands of health care, professional nursing practice, and post-secondary education. The innovations were embedded in the tenets of complexity science, mandates of our professional practice, the contextual relevance of the curriculum and the scholarship of integrative learning. The curriculum is present and future oriented, evidence-based and relevant. The curricular structure shifts content and pedagogy from the traditional stance. The planned and integrative semester course design is greater than the sum of its parts; course content is carefully chosen to illustrate the integrative nature of health and illness, and taken together, these strategies prevent notions of simple to complex learning. The shift from a traditional curricular approach necessitated the examination of how we optimized the use of scarce fiscal and physical educational resources and how we collaborated with all of our stakeholders.