BLOG

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) adopted a new national framework for nursing education in 2021. The overarching educational theory and principles will bring change to virtually every aspect of graduate and postgraduate nursing education. Read on to find out how nursing education is changing, and what nursing educators are doing to adapt. 

What is “The Essentials: Care Competencies for Professional Nursing Education?”

The new framework for nursing education has been laid out in The Essentials: Care Competencies for Professional Nursing Education, the latest installment in a series of updates dating back to 1986. The most recent framework was developed in collaboration with nursing and other healthcare leaders, and officially adopted by the deans of affiliated AACN schools on April 6, 2021. Its intent was to bridge the gap between education and practice and ensure consistent outcomes across all degree levels before someone enters a new clinical role.

The framework brings changes to all graduate and postgraduate AACN programs, impacting nurses who are studying for bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees. It thus impacts all nursing educator programs, including programs for both entry-level and advanced specialized nurses.

This is seen by many educators as a major step toward more competency-based education. Leveraging this update, nursing educators can develop consistent and competency-based programs more fully. The update also helps make nursing education more available to minorities and lower-income populations.

What Changes Does the New AACN Nursing Education Framework Bring?

The AACN’s new nursing education framework covers 10 distinct domains and integrates eight concepts throughout these domains.

The 10 domains that the update features are Knowledge for Nursing Practice; Person-Centered Care; Population Health; Scholarship for the Nursing Discipline; Quality and Safety; Interprofessional Partnerships; Systems-Based Practice; Informatics and Healthcare Technologies; Professionalism; and Personal, Professional, and Leadership Development.

While all of these domains are important, a few particular domains stand out:

• Personal, Professional and Leadership Development simultaneously helps nurses develop a healthy foundation for their own life and aids in growing leadership skills. At a time when many nurses are burnt out, these skills will hopefully better prepare nurses to manage the long-term stresses of the job.
• Person-Centered Care guides nursing education toward providing individualized, holistic care for patients, and it manages to do so within the context of today's healthcare systems. While today's healthcare is theoretically patient-focused, other stressors sometimes make focusing solely on the patient difficult. This domain helps nurses learn to engage and communicate effectively with individuals, while navigating the various systems of healthcare facilities, staffing and management techniques, insurance policies, and technology.
• Professionalism and Interprofessional Partnerships help nurses learn to properly conduct themselves, and how to interact with both other nurses and other healthcare providers in productive ways.

Jones & Bartlett is committed to updating our nursing products to incorporate the new Essentials. Some of the recent revisions featuring the new Essentials content include Leadership in Nursing Practice and Professional Nursing Concepts. The former discusses how to become a leader among nurses, and how to interact with other healthcare providers when discussing care, performance, and other concerns. The latter not only covers professional conduct, but also includes information about the updated ethics standards that are being implemented.

Other books that cover specific aspects of nursing care and nursing specialties have also been updated. These include books such as Dimensional Analysis, Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing and Gerontological Nursing, among many others.

These all cover the relevant domains (e.g. Person-Centered Care, Population Health, etc.), and include the concepts when applicable. For instance, Gerontological Nursing covers Compassionate Care and communication when interacting with family.

How Are the AACN Essentials Being Implemented?

The AACN has recognized that such comprehensive changes to nursing education will take time to implement. It initially laid out a time of 3 years when the framework was first adopted, and it noted that schools might need longer than that to fully transition their programs. Bachelor and doctoral degrees generally last more than 3 years, after all.

As institutions begin the process of implementing the new Essentials, many will look to a phased approach. Of course, faculty will need to adapt their courses. Schools may even need to restructure some classes. Newly updated materials will be available to help nursing educators meet the needs of the new framework.

All of these changes will still take time to implement, but the new framework will guide the development of competent and work-ready nurses who are better prepared for long-term success in the field.

Visit our nursing page to browse all titles in this field.