About the Nursing Program

The mission of the Bethel University Department of Nursing is to provide accessible educational experiences that meet the needs of our diverse learning community. This includes opportunities, environment, mentoring, and leadership necessary for our students to develop to their highest potential as professional nurses.

Highest potential is defined as each student being prepared to exhibit excellence by positively impacting the health care of the diverse patient communities served, demonstrating competency by delivering the ultimate level of safe, quality care through participation in interprofessional collaboration, life-long learning, and advanced education, and implementing evidence-based practice as the standard of care.

In alignment with Bethel University’s mission, we are committed to fostering an environment that values diversity, promotes equity, and ensure inclusion. We strive to create a supportive and respectful atmosphere where every student, regardless of background, can achieve their intellectual, spiritual, and social potential, embodying Christian ideals of reverent spirituality and respect for all members of the community.

The vision of the Bethel University Department of Nursing is to be the premier nursing school in the region. The faculty expects our graduates to be distinguished as a result of their compassionate, academic, clinical, and professional commitment to nursing. Bethel nurses are expected to advocate for their patients’ and communities’ health while contributing to the advancement of safe, quality patient care. Our graduates will be prepared to lead the implementation and standardization of evidence-based practice in an ever-changing healthcare environment.

Bethel's Nursing program honors a three-stage instructional process. This three-stage instructional process is repeated throughout the program to prepare students to provide evidence-based, high-quality, safe patient care.

1. Students review material to be covered in the upcoming class. Class time is spent discussing the reviewed material, answering questions, explaining concepts, and clarifying understanding.
2. Students move to the nursing laboratory on campus to demonstrate comprehension of the material covered in class and to practice applying what they have learned. In the Lab, new knowledge is integrated with previously learned content in order to progressively develop each student’s competence and confidence.
3. Students go onsite at an actual healthcare clinical facility to practice what they have learned—both newly and previously mastered material—in administering patient care under tutelage of the faculty.

The Bethel University nursing graduate is expected to embody certain characteristics. 

These characteristics are as follows:

• Applies knowledge of health and wellness continuum to educate about and advocate for measures to maximize the health of individuals, families, communities, aggregate populations, and the world.
• Exhibits the cultural competence needed to provide holistic health care to individuals, families, communities, aggregate populations, and the world.
• Demonstrates professional excellence, as evidenced by a practice that reflects moral, legal, and ethical principles and accepted standards of practice.
• Integrates liberal arts, science, and nursing knowledge as the foundation of professional practice.
• Demonstrates caring, compassion, and respect for human dignity.
• Acts as the patients’ advocate, making their care and well-being the highest priority.
• Shares responsibility for and assumes a leadership role in the provision of quality health care and its continuous improvement based upon current evidence.
• Uses clinical reasoning and evidence-based practice to improve the health care of individuals, families, communities, aggregate populations, and the world.
• Collaborates and communicates effectively with teams, both intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary, as well as other health care stakeholders using verbal, written, and informatics skills.
• Accepts responsibility as an advocate for health care policies that improve health care for all, taking into account the needs of the profession, the health care system, and society.
• Functions as a professional nurse generalist providing safe, competent, evidence-based quality care.
• Demonstrates a commitment to professional excellence through life-long learning.