Technical Standards
Nursing education requires the completion of a professional program that is both intellectually and physically challenging. Students must be able to take part fully in the academic and clinical life of the program to benefit from the educational activities, and to succeed in fulfilling requirements for a degree or certificate.
Technical standards refer to those physical, cognitive and behavioral abilities required for satisfactory completion of all aspects of the curriculum as a student in the nursing program.
The qualified student must possess the mental, physical, and emotional capacities essential to attaining the competencies required to function as a nurse. These abilities enable the student to perform tasks required to meet professional requirements and work demands of the practicing nurse.
Observation: Candidates must have sufficient sensory capacity to observe in team-based learning and lecture settings, the laboratory, and the health care or community setting. Sensory abilities must be adequate to perform appropriate examination and assessments including functional vision and tactile sensation to observe, diagnose, and treat a patient's condition.
Communication: Candidates must possess sufficient ability to communicate one-on-one and in small and large group settings. As a student, one must demonstrate effective and professional verbal and non-verbal communication in academic, community, educational, and health care settings, and be able to demonstrate proficiency in written and spoken English.
Motor: Candidates must have the ability to participate in diagnostic and therapeutic maneuvers and procedures. They must be able to negotiate patient care environments and be able to move between settings such as the classroom, health care facility, educational, or community setting. Physical stamina sufficient to complete a rigorous course of didactic and clinical study is required. Long periods of sitting, standing or moving are required in a variety of learning sites. Candidates must be able to coordinate both gross and fine muscular movements, maintain equilibrium, and possess functional use of the senses of touch and vision.
Intellectual: Candidates must be able to measure, calculate reason, analyze, and integrate information as well as be able to comprehend temporal and spatial relationships.
Social: Candidates must exercise good judgment and be able to function effectively in the face of stress, taxing workloads, and the uncertainties inherent in clinical practice. They must be able to maintain mature, sensitive and effective professional relationships with faculty, staff, students,
patients, family members, and other members of the health care and/or educational team. Compassion, integrity, concern for others, interpersonal skills, interest, and motivation are all qualities that will be assessed during the admissions process and throughout the student’s nursing education.
The following requirements are considered necessary for full participation:
- Students must be able to read, write, speak and understand English at a level consistent with successful course completion and development of positive patient-nurse relationships
- Students may attend classes 30 hours or more each week, including combinations of lecture, discussion, laboratory and clinical activities
- Preparation for class typically requires an additional 20-30 hours per week. The curriculum may also require scheduled classes or laboratory experiences at local facilities in the early morning, evening or weekends
- Students will participate in intellectual activities requiring critical thinking, judgment, analysis, arithmetic competency, and conceptualization of spatial relationships, problem solving and planning within reasonable time frames within a complex environment
- Students will be required to participate in clinical and laboratory experiences that involve exposure to and palpation of patients’ and simulated patients’ body parts by faculty and students
- Students must have verbal and non-verbal interpersonal and communication skills that are consistent with productive classroom participation, respectful interactions with faculty, students, staff, patients, and development of appropriate therapeutic relationships
- Students must possess the emotional health required for full use of their intellectual abilities, adaptation to unexpected change, exercise of good judgment, and safe completion of all responsibilities.