Core Courses

Part of the coursework is applying the knowledge you’ve gained.

Integrating the program outcomes with our unique teaching methods sets Alverno’s MSN program apart from other MSN degrees because it gives you the resources of learning that you will apply with flexibility and expertise. Our program has earned our graduates preferred placement in healthcare and educational facilities throughout Milwaukee and across the country. The MSN program can be completed in five full-time semesters, or in as few as seven semesters part-time, and includes the following core courses.

Required Core Courses

Theories & Frameworks for Advanced Nursing Practice
As a student, you will examine the evolving theoretical foundations of the nursing profession through the exploration of a nursing or related discipline’s theory.

Nursing Inquiry, Research & Scholarship
You will develop research skills you can use to promote quality healthcare to clients, initiate change and improve nursing education and clinical practice.

Healthcare Systems: Organization, Economics & Politics
You will examine the interrelationships among healthcare policy and politics, delivery and access-to-care issues, and the financing of healthcare to make high-quality, cost-effective choices in the allocation of resources and in formulating healthcare agendas for individuals and communities.

Education & Human Development: The Scholarship of Teaching
You will apply theoretical frameworks from nursing, education, curriculum design and human development to actual teaching environments and APN teaching practice.

Advanced Practice Roles & Ethical Decision Making
You will explore current and emerging roles of advanced practice nurses in various practice settings, with an emphasis on legal and professional issues, models of practice, and the role of the advanced practice nurse in healthcare management and promotion.

Advanced Physiology & Pathophysiology
You will use theory and research to explore the etiology, pathogenesis and clinical manifestations of common diseases for individuals across the lifespan, and consider variations in physiological health and illness processes attributable to race, culture, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status.

Advanced Pharmacotherapeutics & Clinical Decision Making
You will examine and apply principles of advanced pharmacology in the management of clients across the lifespan and in multiple settings.

Advanced Health & Physical Assessment
You will examine and apply advanced health-and-physical assessment techniques, research findings and guidelines needed to assess health status, examining and applying theories in the collaborative care of culturally diverse individuals, families and communities.

Promoting Health through Practice-based Research
This course revisits the link among nature-of-inquiry questions, analytical frameworks, methodological designs, and data-analysis techniques to evaluate their collective “fit.”

Capstone: Scholarship to Advanced Nursing
You will use a practice-based research inquiry process to study select complex issues confronting health and illness in today's cost-conscious healthcare world.