Degree Objectives & Values

Registered nurses who have earned a Master of Science in Nursing degree through Gonzaga University are able to:

• Critically examine and deliberatively incorporate theories, advanced knowledge, and current research findings from nursing and other disciplines to advance nursing practice.
• Deliberatively incorporate and model professional and Jesuit values, with an appreciation for human diversity, and ethical, spiritual, political, financial, and legal considerations into advanced nursing practice.
• Develop and articulate a personal model of advanced nursing practice.
• Critically review and synthesize evidence from a variety of sources to guide practice and advance the profession of nursing.
• Develop, direct, and/or implement individualized, humanistic and holistic plans of health care in collaboration with individuals, groups, communities, and populations.
• Influence nursing practice and the delivery of health care in diverse settings.
• Advance the profession of nursing by assuming leadership roles and responsibilities in the delivery of health care.
• Improve the delivery of nursing and health care by influencing social and health policy.

Gonzaga MSN Degree Overarching Values

Social Justice

Social justice is at once an ideological and action-oriented commitment to service of the poor. The promotion of social justice is a concrete, radical, but proportionate response to an unjustly suffering world. A commitment to social justice calls our faculty and students to a sincere interest in several ideal characteristics, as manifest in three complementary dimensions of Jesuit higher education: in whom our students become, in what our faculty do, and in how our programs proceed (Adapted from Kolvenbach, 2000).

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership, an approach that links leadership and spirituality and that is consistent with nursing and Jesuit values, describes the individual who is servant first and who then responds to a call to lead. Servant leadership “manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served” and is evident when those served “grow as persons . . . and become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants” (Greenleaf, 1970).

Community

Community describes a group of people who interact with each other on a regular basis and share one or more common interests. Nurses form partnerships with communities in order to better understand their needs and the issues and plan ways to collaborate to meet their needs. Faculty endeavor to build community with students and colleagues in order to create a learning climate where each individual is valued as a person and where mutual learning is fostered, scholarship is supported and differing opinions are welcomed.

Reflective Practice

Reflective practice is a mindful approach that requires students to develop new understanding and appreciation through a process of attending to and exploring their own physical, mental, and emotional processes and responses during ordinary, everyday tasks. This attention enables students to listen attentively to others, recognize their own errors, refine their own practice, make evidence-based decisions, clarify their values, and develop new perspectives so they can act with compassion, competence, presence, and insight. It places emphasis on the development and refinement of critical thinking that is anchored in theory, research, and practice. Although mindfulness and reflective practice cannot be explicitly taught, they can be modeled by mentors and cultivated in learners (Adapted from Epstein, 1999 and Longenecker, 2002).