About KCU
Located on a 121-acre campus bordering Interstate 64, Kentucky Christian University (KCU) is nestled in the beautiful foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. KCU was established in Grayson, Kentucky in 1919 by J. W. Lusby and J. O. Snodgrass. KCU refers to itself as a “Great Commission” University, a designation derived from Jesus’ parting words to his disciples: “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19). With His Commission in mind, KCU has moved beyond a typical “Bible College” structure and has evolved into a Christian liberal arts university with a strong focus on affecting society with the Gospel of Christ through preparing those who will lead and influence society. The University’s objective is to educate Christian professionals, educators, healthcare providers, and church leaders who will carry the spirit of the Christian ethic through their fields of study “into all the world”.
Currently, students at KCU can obtain a bachelor’s degree in Advanced Biblical Studies, Bible and Ministry, Biology (Pre-Professional), Business Administration, Counseling Psychology, History (Pre-Law), Nursing, Social Work, Teacher Education, and University Studies. Graduate degree programs include Master of Arts in Biblical Studies, Master of Arts in Christian Leadership, Master of Arts in Religion, and Master of Science in Nursing. The matrix of a strong biblical foundation, emphasis on character, commitment to service-learning, and quality vocational preparation is distinctive at KCU. Dr. Terry Allcorn, the current president, is committed to strengthening University programs that prepare Christians to provide leadership in a variety of carefully chosen fields, particularly those that are related to the helping professions.
The School of Nursing was founded in 2001 and graduated its first class of prelicensure BSN students in 2005. The School was renamed the Yancey School of Nursing (YSN) in 2008 with a gift provided by Robert and Nina Yancey that made possible the building of a new School of Nursing facility. YSN has grown to include an online degree completion (RN-BSN) program and KCU’s newest degree program, an online Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) program to prepare Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) as Certified Nurse Practitioners in the family/individual lifespan population focus. The MSN program began enrolling students in fall 2015. Congruent with the University’s emphasis on preparing Christian leaders for positions throughout the world, the YSN is committed to educating and equipping nurses in a Christ-centered academic environment, with the values, core competencies, expertise, and body of knowledge needed to provide leadership and service in a 21st-century health care system.
Mission of KCU
The mission of Kentucky Christian University is to engage students in a transformative educational experience that equips them as effective Christian professionals providing servant leadership for the church and society.
Mission of the Yancey School of Nursing
The mission of the Kentucky Christian University (KCU) Yancey School of Nursing (YSN) is to equip students as liberally educated nurses in a Christ-centered academic environment, with the values, core competencies, and core knowledge necessary to provide leadership and service for the nursing profession. A population-focused healthcare approach emphasizing health promotion and maintenance serves as the foundation to prepare graduates to function autonomously as clinical decision-makers in multiple healthcare settings and to pursue advanced professional education.
Philosophy
Consistent with the philosophy of Kentucky Christian University, the faculty of the School of Nursing subscribes to the following beliefs about the individual, health, environment, nursing, and nursing education.
Individual
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Each individual is a physically, psychosocially, and spiritually integrated being endowed with dignity and worth who is created in God’s image and has the capacity to live in a loving relationship with God, self, others, and the environment.
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Each individual possesses self-direction and can be a responsible steward of God’s gifts of health and the environment.
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Each individual is a part of larger groups such as the family, community, and global village.
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The family is composed of two or more individuals that may be related or have special bonds.
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The family is critical to the establishment and maintenance of biblical values, including moral integrity, ethical principle, and human dignity, and creates an environment that influences the physical, cognitive, psychosocial, attitudinal, and spiritual development of its members.
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Community, as a social support system, may be based on geography, shared interests, or shared characteristics with the size varying from a small group to the global village.
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Because of modern communication and travel, community has no boundaries.
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Nurses must function as managers and leaders in a larger healthcare community of professionals and non-professionals using effective communication, collaboration, partnerships, and empowerment to achieve health goals.
Health
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Health is being able to optimally function as God originally created man; health will never be complete on this earth but can only be realized in eternity, returning to an ideal state.
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Health is an individual perception of and satisfaction with one’s ability to optimally function.
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An individual’s connections with the family, community, and global village can function to facilitate health.
Environment
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All factors that can affect an individual’s behavior but that are external to that individual are considered to be the environment and include both physical and spiritual realities.
Nursing
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Nurses as role models must endeavor to pursue healthy lifestyles, promote wellness within the family, community, and the world and effect social change that promotes a healthy environment.
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Nurses must be able to make responsible moral and ethical decisions and think logically, analytically, and critically.
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Nurses must know how to seek, find, and use health information and commit to lifelong learning.
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Nurses must be skilled contributors to their profession, committed to serving the needs of others, regardless of ethnic identity, race, gender, age, status, diagnosis, or ability to pay.
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Nurses use Jesus Christ as a model of servant leadership, nursing in a ministry of compassionate, dynamic, autonomous, altruistic, and holistic caring, even if the nurse’s personal beliefs do not coincide with those of the individual, family, or community receiving her/his care.
Nursing Education
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Nursing education must provide a learning environment in which liberal education, biblical values, and effective working relationships between faculty and students enable students to integrate general concepts into nursing practice.
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Students and teachers must share responsibility for the teaching-learning environment, course content, and learning strategies through ongoing evaluation of the curriculum.
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The role of the faculty is to facilitate learning by being mentors and role models.
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Nursing education is an interactive process between faculty and students in which students are responsible and accountable for their own learning and faculty provide the necessary support and resources.
Organizing Framework
Ten major philosophical concepts provide direction for the Kentucky Christian University School of Nursing curriculum organization. The School of Nursing curriculum is unified and made internally congruent by the integration of the following concepts:
Caring healing relationship Clinical reasoning
Individual Wellness promotion
Environment Carative factors
Nursing Population focused care
Competence Community
The conceptual framework is designed to serve as a guide for the selection of course content, ordering of courses, and sequencing of meaningful learning experiences through which students are prepared to practice professional nursing at a beginning level.
The nursing curriculum is supported by liberal arts and sciences, general education, and biblical values, all of which provide a foundation for nursing education and practice.
Organizing Framework Concept Definitions
Caring Healing Relationship
The caring healing relationship is introduced as a commitment to servant leadership, as exemplified in the life of Christ. Nursing is presented as a calling and not just a job. According to Watson (1996a), caring provides a way of relating to someone and is experienced both as an extension of and as something separate from oneself. The person being cared for is viewed as a physically, psychosocially, and spiritually integrated being endowed with dignity and worth. The curriculum builds on the development of the transpersonal caring healing relationship (Watson, 1996a) centering on communication, self-awareness, trust, and patience. Personal, professional, and spiritual growth is emphasized in upper-level courses to assist the nurse in entering into a deeper level of professional healing practice.
Individual
Providing nursing care to the client as an individual, as part of a family, and as part of a community, levels the concept of the individual. Opportunities are presented to apply the nursing process in caring for the family as a unit and caring for the community as a whole.
Environment
Environment is introduced as factors that can affect the individual’s health care behavior either positively or negatively and must be carefully considered when planning nursing care. The family is examined as an environment that influences the physical, cognitive, psychosocial, attitudinal, and spiritual development of its members. In upper-level courses, emphasis is placed on the nurse’s responsibility to care for the health of the community and the environment.
Nursing
The concept of nursing is introduced with emphasis on modeling a healthy lifestyle, moral and ethical decision-making, effective communication skills, and commitment to caring and professionalism. The concept of nursing is further developed with a focus on wellness promotion within the family. Additionally, lifelong learning, leadership, management, and how to find and use health information are presented. In upper-level courses, learning experiences focus on effective collaboration and partnership with individuals, families, communities, and other healthcare providers in a variety of settings to facilitate wellness promotion within the community as well as emphasize the significance of empowering others to effect change.
Competence
Competency-oriented learning is leveled across the clinical opportunities. Specific practice outcomes that reflect integration of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills necessary to provide competent nursing care must be documented to successfully progress through the curriculum.
Clinical Reasoning
Throughout the curriculum, clinical reasoning is emphasized requiring the nursing student to apply logical, analytical, and creative problem-solving techniques to client care. A variety of active learning strategies, such as case studies, seminar experiences, self-directed learning, and reflective thinking, are used in classroom and clinical settings to refine clinical reasoning skills.
Wellness Promotion
Because individuals possess self-direction and are responsible for making decisions that influence their health and environment, preventable occurrences such as suffering, premature death, and medical costs can be decreased by wellness promotion. Wellness promotion can be categorized as primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention. Primary prevention involves helping individuals achieve their optimal health potential. The scope of primary prevention is nearly limitless. Secondary prevention focuses on the early detection of diseases and prompt, effective treatment. Treatment modalities are included in the area of secondary prevention. Tertiary prevention deals with rehabilitation after an episode of disease or trauma. The diagnosis of chronic diseases can often create a readiness point for education relating to risk reduction and wellness promotion. The concept of wellness promotion is covered throughout the curriculum.
Carative Factors/Caritas Processes
In this Organizing Framework, carative factors are central to the nursing process. Watson’s (1996b) original ten carative factors include:
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Formation of a humanistic-altruistic system of values
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Instillation of faith-hope
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Cultivation of sensitivity to one’s self and others
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Development of a helping-trusting, human caring relationship
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Promotion and acceptance of the expression of positive and negative feelings
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Systematic use of a creative problem-solving caring process
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Promotion of transpersonal teaching-learning
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Provision for a supportive, protective, and/or corrective mental, physical, societal, and spiritual environment
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Assistance with gratification of human needs
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Allowance for existential-phenomenological-
spiritual forces
Watson’s (1996b) carative factors were redefined as caritas processes (Watson, 2008), which are intended to provide guidelines for putting caring practice into action:
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Practicing loving-kindness and equanimity within context of caring consciousness.
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Being authentically present and enabling, and sustaining the deep belief system and subjective life world of self and one-being cared for.
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Cultivating one’s own spiritual practices and transpersonal self, going beyond ego self.
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Developing and sustaining a helping-trusting, authentic caring relationship.
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Being present to, and supportive of the expression of positive and negative feelings.
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Creatively using self and all ways of knowing as part of the caring process; engaging in artistry of caring-healing practices.
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Engaging in a genuine teaching-learning experience that attends to wholeness and meaning, attempting to stay within others’ frame of reference.
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Creating a healing environment at all levels, whereby wholeness, beauty, comfort, dignity, and peace are potentiated.
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Assisting with basic needs, with an intentional caring consciousness, administering ‘human care essentials,’ which potentiate alignment of mind-body-spirit, wholeness in all aspects of care.
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Opening and attending to mysterious dimensions of one’s life-death; soul care for self and the one being cared for; “allowing and being open to miracles.”
At all levels of the curriculum, learning activities are planned based on these carative factors.
The nursing process, influenced by evidence-based practice, consists of assessment, diagnosis, analysis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Throughout the process, the carative factors potentiate therapeutic healing processes and relationships, affect the one caring and the one being cared for, and go beyond changing times, settings, procedures, functional tasks, treatment, and technology.
A crosswalk depicting the relationship between the carative factors and caritas processes can be accessed at http://www.humancaring.org (Wagner, A. L., 2010, Core Concepts of Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring/Caring Science.)
Population-Focused Care
Health care must be focused on ways to improve the health of the population so as to better inform the public and redistribute resources for health promotion and disease prevention. Population-focused health care, as a means of assuring equal treatment and access to quality care in a fair and non-discriminatory way, is presented at all levels of the curriculum. Emphasis is placed on targeting health promotion at populations, not just single individuals, through policies that support healthy lifestyles and reduce health hazards.
Community
Throughout the curriculum at all levels, educational experiences are provided that allow nursing students to interact with a larger healthcare community of professionals and non-professionals. Such interaction allows nursing students the opportunity to refine their communication, leadership, management, research, and collaboration skills. Educational activities also emphasize working with community organizations, health education, and generalist care to selected individuals, families, and groups.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (October, 2008). The essentials of baccalaureate
education for professional nursing practice. https://www.aacnnursing.org/
Watson, J. (1999b). Postmodern nursing and beyond. Churchill Livingstone.
Watson, J. 1996a). Watson’s theory of transpersonal caring.
Watson, J. (2008). Nursing: The philosophy and science of caring (Rev. ed). University Press of
Colorado.
Authority & Accreditation
The baccalaureate and master’s degree programs at Kentucky Christian University are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, 655 K Street, NW, Suite 750, Washington, DC 20001, 202-887- 6791 (http://www.ccneaccreditation.
Students who complete this program have the educational preparation to sit for the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) and/or American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) certification examination in this role and population.
The Yancey School of Nursing (YSN) has been recognized as the “#10 online MSN Nurse Practitioner Program in the country” by nursepractitioneronline.com in 2021. The RN-BSN program was named “#1 RN-BSN online program” in the state by registerednursing.org in 2021.
Kentucky Christian University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). Students are eligible to transfer academic credits to another institution at the discretion of the receiving institution.
