Promoting health and quality of life along the care continuum: Creating a nursing curriculum for today’s health care environment

Background The focus on traditional acute, hospital-based health care is being replaced with a new paradigm aimed at providing primary care, care of populations, and care across transitions and providers. The Institute of Medicine’s report (2010), the “Future of Nursing” emphasized the need for nurses to lead health care change and called for nursing education focused on a community and population-based perspective, person centered care, and emerging roles for nurses across the care continuum. In response, the Jefferson College of Nursing embarked on the ambitious task of designing a new and innovative baccalaureate nursing curriculum over a 13 month period