Graduate Nursing Program Information for Current Students

HUMANITY is composed of individuals who are living systems with biopsychosocial spiritual attributes. Human beings are unique, holistic beings and ever-changing as they progress through stages of growth and development. Individuals’ behavior patterns and ability to function may be affected by many variables. Some behaviors are predictable, based on developmental social and biological norms, while others are specific to the individual and may be influenced by external factors that must be considered when providing care. Human beings are accountable for their own actions and decisions. An individual can be part of a family, group, or community system. Culture refers to the values, beliefs, norms, and practices of these systems. Culturally diverse nursing care appreciates the variability in nursing approaches needed to provide culturally competent care. 

The ENVIRONMENT consists of an individual’s internal and external systems which are in constant interaction. The internal system is composed of the person’s psychological, spiritual, and biological components, while the external system is composed of other individuals, families, groups, and communities as well as the circumstances and physical conditions surrounding the individual. Internal and external environments are dynamic and can be modified to positively affect the health of an individual, family, and community.

HEALTH is a process of balancing internal and external systems through the optimal use of available resources to achieve one’s maximum potential. Attainment of these maximum. potential results is optimal health whereas imbalance of internal and external systems results in illness. Care that optimizes health and promotes wellness is the right of all individuals, families, and communities and is the shared responsibility of health professionals and clients.

TEACHING-LEARNING is a form of scholarship that includes pedagogical and role modeling activities that serve to communicate the teacher’s knowledge effectively to students. Effective teachings empower learners to think critically, apply clinical decision making to clinical situations, become competent, and have a desire for lifelong learning. Reflecting the belief that students learn differently, good teaching incorporates a variety of pedagogical activities and provides flexibility to accommodate different learning styles. While learning sometimes involves careful sequencing that directly builds on prior content, students also learn through experiences that help them relate new knowledge into their professional and clinical repertoire. In a rapidly changing world such as health care, where content becomes quickly outdated, learning experiences must develop students’ abilities to be self-directed, gather and analyze information, and integrate knowledge in the pursuit of answers or creative solutions to intellectual and clinical problems. Consistent with the philosophy of Miami University, the scholarship of teaching is of utmost importance in the Department of Nursing, followed by scholarly activities related to discovery and research, and. those scholarly activities that build bridges between theory and practice, such as involvement in clinical practice and professional service linkages to the community.

NURSING integrates biological principles, research, theories of behavior, caring, and nursing, to assist individuals, families, and communities to reach optimal health. Nursing is an art and a science. The nursing process, a method of inquiry and decision making, is used by nurses to assess, diagnose, plan, implement, and evaluate nursing care. Therapeutic communication skills are essential components to the art of nursing which also includes the attitude and approach in which care is delivered. Through genuine caring and sensitivity to the individual’s uniqueness in a culturally diverse society, the nurse assists individuals, families, aggregates, and communities throughout the lifespan with the goal to promote, maintain, and/or restore health to the client.

NURSING PRACTICE is defined as the diagnosis and treatment of human responses to actual or potential health problems. There are three roles used by nurses to practice nursing. They include: provider of care, manager of care, and member of the discipline of nursing.

The roles of the graduate level nurse include the following:

Provider of care: The graduate systematically assesses and interprets data about the health and illness of individuals, families and communities; designs systems of care to promote and maintain the health of individuals, families and communities; uses effective communication skills for the purpose of impacting systems; evaluates the nursing care delivery system and promotes goal-directed change to meet client needs and optimize wellness. The graduate level nurse employs critical thinking skills to address complex healthcare problems and integrates basic knowledge of nursing theory, nursing research, and clinical practice to maximize the contribution of nursing to improve the overall health of individuals, families, and communities.

Manager of care: The graduate level nurse uses scientific principles to prioritize, plan, and organize the delivery of comprehensive nursing care; uses time and resources effectively and efficiently; delegates aspects of care to other nursing personnel, consistent with their level of education and expertise; assures adherence to ethical and legal standards; initiates and monitors interdisciplinary referrals to appropriate specialists, departments, and agencies to provide services and promote continuity of care; and assumes a leadership role in health care management to improve client care.

Member of the discipline of nursing: The graduate level nurse acts as a healthcare advocate; promotes collegiality and collectivity among nurses; participates in efforts to address social trends and issues that have implications for healthcare; uses interdisciplinary resources to protect and address ethical and legal concerns; applies theory and incorporates research findings into practice by consulting with nurse researchers regarding identified nursing problems; utilizes knowledge of health care policies and finance; uses resources for continuous learning and self-improvement; promotes self-evaluation and peer review processes; provides leadership in organized professional activities; and promotes consumer awareness of nursing contributions to health promotion and health care delivery.

Nurses use critical thinking, a purposeful process that enables the thinker to interpret nursing problems, clarify and analyze issues, make valid inferences, generate and assess solutions, analyze and evaluate arguments and monitor one’s own thinking. Using a framework of functional health patterns, graduate nursing students assess individual variations of human responses to life transitions and actual or potential health problems. Foundation courses provide understanding of health, healthcare delivery systems, informatics, evidence-based practice and cultural concepts. Graduate nursing courses facilitate understanding of health, nursing care, and critical thinking through the nursing process.

Graduate-level nurses gather and analyze data, construct and discern relationships, and apply knowledge to improve individual health outcomes. The learning process requires students to understand contexts of nursing and health care that are inclusive of changes in healthcare delivery. While learning, they will engage with other learners and health care providers to provide nursing care sensitive to individual needs, use creative problem solving to improve health outcomes for individuals, families, and communities, and make thoughtful decisions about nursing care. Opportunities are provided for experiential and discovery learning which promote independent thinking and self-direction as well as shared learning.

Graduate-level nurses use effective communication, a process that involves the ability to transmit, receive, and respond to information through written, oral, nonverbal, and electronic means. The nurse interacts with individuals who are experiencing life transitions across the lifespan which impact health.

The graduate-level nurse assists individuals, alone or within the context of families or groups, with the acquisition of knowledge, understanding, skills, and resources necessary to manage their health.

Graduate-level nurses interact with individuals and demonstrate caring by knowing the meaning of events in the other person’s life, being present, doing for, facilitating passage through life transitions and the unfamiliar, and maintaining belief in one’s potential. In this interaction, a relationship is established which values each person and allows both the individual and the nurse to identify accountability and responsibility for actions.

Graduate-level nurses assist individuals, families, and communities in their quest to attain optimal health and wellness through the utilization of therapeutic nursing interventions. These interventions employ psychosocial and psychomotor strategies to promote health and wellness, prevent disease, and respond to health concerns while practicing within the roles of advocate, facilitator, leader, and teacher.

Human lives are embedded within a sociocultural, physical and temporal environment that is integral to the experience of health. The environment also encompasses an individual’s psychological, spiritual, and biological components.

Nurses collaborate with clients to foster internal and external environments that support and optimize health. Nursing is practiced in a variety of settings. Graduate-level nursing students must critically think about how a change in the environment alters the context of nursing care and affects health outcomes. Preschools, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, health centers, and community-based settings may be used as a learning environment.

Graduate-level nurses apply the nursing process to the community and healthcare delivery systems, through population focused care.

Health is an abstract experience, a dynamic state of interaction between the individual and the internal and external environment that causes changes throughout the lifespan.

Life transitions can have a positive or negative impact on health and health care delivery. Transitions are identified as developmental, situational, and health related. Developmental transitions are those changes encountered at different stages of life. Situational transitions are often related to life circumstances, societal changes, or environmental changes which affect one’s ability to function, such as loss of job, homelessness, or disasters. Health-illness transitions are changes that arise from individuals who are at risk for health problems, or are seeking assistance with existing acute or chronic health problems encountered in life.

Graduate-level nurses seek to understand the impact of life transitions on health and their meaning to the individual and use available resources to assist the client to attain maximum potential and optimal health. Nurses apply theory, research, and knowledge of the health sciences to help the client achieve optimal health and seek to prevent disease and promote health and wellness through a variety of health promotion measures.

Individuals are living human systems that influence and are influenced by interaction with each other, by life transitions, and by the nature of socioeconomic, political, and environmental forces that impact health and health care delivery. Client systems have functional health patterns that are measurable components of individual health.

Graduate-level nurses view the individual client systems through a holistic perspective and collaborate with the clients to maximize health potential and also provide evidence-based care for the client systems of families, groups, and communities.

1. Translate and integrate knowledge to inform the practice of nursing, including expert judgment in practice.
2. Synthesize understanding of effective organizational and systems leadership and interprofessional collaboration in complex systems of practice.
3. Apply principles and methods of quality and safety science, nursing science, and evidence-based practice as an integral aspect of nursing.
4. Use informatics and emerging technologies to manage and improve nursing practice, advocating for system level improvement in health and healthcare.
5. Collaborate with interprofessional partners including team members, patients, and communities to optimize care, enhance the experience for stakeholders, improve outcomes, and reduce costs.
6. Synthesize understanding of equitable population health outcomes.
7. Analyze components of person-centered care for individuals, families and communities including individual to systems interventions targeting positive health outcomes.
8. Synthesize ethics and values of the profession, a commitment to self-development, and the professional leadership expertise into the development of an individual professional nursing identity.

• Family Nurse Practitioner
• Nurse Executive Leadership

1. Manage the care of patients in the primary care setting by utilizing principles of assessment, diagnosis, planning and evaluation.
2. Diagnose pathologies and perform procedures in the primary care setting.
3. Partner with patients to provide and advocate for person-centered, culturally relevant care.
4. Develop and engage in interprofessional collaboration and community partnerships to meet the needs of a diverse patient population.
5. Apply leadership and professionalism in the role of advanced nursing practice.
6. Synthesize understanding of the healthcare delivery system to promote safe, cost-effective care.
7. Apply principles of population health, quality improvement, and evidence-based practice to primary care practice.

The Nursing Leadership MSN Graduate will be able to:

1. Synthesize and apply effective communication skills with diverse individuals to promote community, academic and interprofessional relationships.
2. Model leadership in health systems, including reflective practice and visionary thinking.
3. Synthesize understanding of systems and leadership skills to effectively manage change, lead health systems and plan for succession.
4. Synthesize and apply ethics and professional accountability, including advocacy for the health care team, for patients/families and for the community.
5. Advocate for the advancement of the profession and create a professional career plan for nurse executive leadership.
6. Synthesize financial and strategic management, human resource management, and information management skills necessary to lead health systems.

View the MSN required courses.

1. Develop and evaluate new approaches for quality improvement based on scientific theories and principles.
2. Employ principles of business, finance, economics, and health policy to develop and implement system-wide initiatives to improve outcomes.
3. Design, direct and evaluate quality improvement methodologies to promote safe, timely, effective, efficient and equitable outcomes.
4. Provide leadership in the evaluation and resolution of ethical and legal issues within a complex organization.
5. Synthesize leadership in the development and implementation of institutional, local, state, federal, and/or international health policy.
6. Employ consultative and leadership skills in intraprofessional and interprofessional teams to facilitate quality initiatives to improve health care and/or organizational outcomes.
7. Evaluate delivery models and/or strategies using socioeconomic cultural, organizational and community concepts.
8. Synthesize advanced levels of systems thinking, decision making and accountability in designing, delivering and evaluating and evidence-based project to improve outcomes in a complex organization.

Miami Nursing Department faculty and staff

Graduate Program Contacts:

• Stephanie Nicely, EdD, MSN, RN, Chair, Department of Nursing and Associate Professor nicelys@MiamiOH.edu
• Jennifer Rode, PhD, FNP, Professor, Director Graduate Nursing Programs rodejl@MiamiOH.edu 
• Dr. Tricia Neu, DNP, FNP, Associate Professor and Director of Family Nurse Practitioner Program neutn@MiamiOH.edu 
• Linda Helling, Senior Program Assistant Graduate Programs, hellinlj@MiamiOH.edu

FNP summer workshop provides an opportunity to develop hands-on skills, network with peers, and build student-faculty relationships. Workshops are required and take place in Oxford, OH and typically last two to three days. 

• Future workshop dates: TBD

• The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) is the national voice for academic nursing. AACN works to establish quality standards for nursing education; assists schools in implementing those standards; influences the nursing profession to improve health care; and promotes public support for professional nursing education, research, and practice. Miami University’s graduate nursing program was developed to align with AACN essentials.
• The master's degree program in nursing (MSN) at Miami University is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education.
• The Doctor of Nursing Practice program at Miami University is pursuing initial accreditation by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. Applying for accreditation does not guarantee that accreditation will be granted.

View the Graduate Nursing Student Handbook 2025-2026.

View the Graduate Nursing Student Handbook 2024-2025.

View the Graduate Nursing Student Handbook 2023-2024.

View the Graduate Nursing Student Handbook 2022-2023.

The Department of Nursing has three Graduate Nursing Committees:

1. Graduate Curriculum Committee is responsible for oversight of all graduate curriculum, ensuring alignment to professional standards and assessing programmatic outcomes to evaluate curriculum effectiveness. Graduate Curriculum Committee provides a formal channel for student input to programmatic discussions, allowing students to be involved in the policy- and decision-making of the graduate nursing program. Student liaisons from the graduate program will be elected by their peers or nominated by faculty each year to serve. When students identify issues or have feedback to present formally, they may request through their representative that an item be placed on the curriculum committee’s agenda for discussion. Students may also contact the graduate program administration directly via the Graduate Nursing Program Director.
2. Graduate Systematic Program Evaluation (SPEC) is responsible for the comprehensive evaluation of all components of the graduate program, including assessment and achievement of program learning outcomes.
3. Graduate Admission, Progression & Graduation (AP&G) is responsible for reviewing and revising the admission and progression policies and procedures for the graduate nursing program.

• Graduate Nursing Consent to Testing and Information Sharing [PDF]
• Graduate Nursing FERPA [PDF]
• Graduate Nursing Clinical Placement Policy [PDF]
• Graduate Nursing Badges and Miami University IDs [PDF]
• Graduate Student Physical Form [PDF]
• DNP Mentor Information Packet [PDF]
• DNP Practicum Hours Plan 722 [PDF]
• DNP Practicum Hours Plan 724 [PDF]
• DNP Practicum Hours Plan 726 [PDF]
• DNP Practicum Site Approval Form [PDF]
• DNP Program MSN Hours Verification and Additional Hours Calculation Form [PDF]
• FNP Track Transfer Request [PDF]
• G-AP&G-Petition for Special Consideration [PDF]
• NEL Track Transfer Request [PDF]

View the Nursing Library Resources.

View the graduate degree requirements.

Upon graduation, Family Nurse Practitioner students will be eligible to test for Family Nurse Practitioner certification exams from two organizations:

1. American Nurses Credentialing Center
2. American Academy of Nurse Practitioner Certification Board

Upon graduation, Nurse Executive Leadership students will meet the education eligibility requirements to test for certification from two organizations:

1. The Executive Nursing Practice Certification from the American Organization for Nursing Leadership
2. The Nurse Executive Certification from the American Nurses Credentialing Center