Adult Health Nursing II: Complex and High Acuity Care

Catalog description

This concept-based course prepares nursing students to plan care for adults with complex, acute, and life-threatening conditions through advanced clinical reasoning across interacting physiological, professional, and psychosocial concepts. Using case-based learning, concept mapping, and unfolding high-acuity scenarios, students examine how multisystem interactions drive patient deterioration, how professional practice addresses systems-level challenges, and how ethical, cultural, and end-of-life considerations shape crisis care. Grounded in Jesuit values of cura personalis and social justice, learners evaluate quality and safety initiatives, healthcare systems, and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, with emphasis on equity, advocacy, and the nurse's role in improving outcomes. By course completion, students will recognize and respond to complex patient deterioration, coordinate care in high-acuity environments, and apply systems-based, ethical, person-centered decision-making to support safe, equitable care for critically ill adults and those facing end-of-life transitions.