Moving from Your Associate to Your Baccalaureate Nursing Degree

Moving from Your Associate to Your Baccalaureate Nursing Degree is designed to welcome and celebrate the experience, knowledge, and expertise practicing nurses bring to the academic table as they pursue a baccalaureate degree in nursing. The book aligns with Institute of Medicine competencies and emphasizes leadership and management, ethics and decision-making, critical thinking, evidence-based practice, caring, collaboration, communication, and self-reflective skills, all supported by literature and practice examples. As future change agents, readers are asked to reflect on current issues and trends influencing nursing education and practice. They are challenged to choose a concept of interest, develop a PICOT question, search the literature, and critique a selected article to determine if it is, indeed, scholarly. Readers also recall critical incidents and examine nursing theorists whose theories align with their own individual, current practice. Quotes from nursing leaders, nursing theorists, and members of the interdisciplinary healthcare team, as well as stories from practicing nurses, exemplify and support current evidence in the profession. Chapter exercises provide readers the time and opportunity to reflect on their professional practice. Moving from Your Associate to Your Baccalaureate Nursing Degree is designed to help nursing students better comprehend those processes inherent in the successful transition to the role of the baccalaureate-prepared nurse.