DESCRIPTION IN BRIEF
The School of Nursing provides quality nurses to serve North Carolina. The SON offers BSN, MSN and PhD tracks. In 2006, the SON began admitting students twice a year, producing another 200 graduates annually. The SON is expanding its efforts in human patient simulation, psychiatric-mental health nursing and geriatric nursing.
Most recently, global nursing has taken hold at the SON. Each year, an increasing number of students participate in a clinical experience abroad. Students have traveled to Guatemala, Honduras, Uganda, Oaxaca and many other locations. The list of countries continues to grow with the expanding interest among the students.
RANKINGS
•National Institutes of Health: No. 4 in research funding
•U.S. News & World Report: Among top 10 graduate programs
•NCLEX: 98 percent overall passage rate for 2008
PROGRAMS OF STUDY
•Traditional BSN program (upper division, 24 months)
•Accelerated BSN program for those with non-nursing bachelor’s degrees (14 months)
•Online RN-BSN options for associate degree and diploma program graduates
•RN-MSN
•MSN program with advanced practice and healthcare systems specialties
•Post-MSN option in advanced practice specialties
•PhD program in nursing science
•Predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships
STUDENTS AND FACULTY
Students
• BSN: 409
•MSN: 229
•PhD: 55
Total enrollment: 693
Faculty:
• Tenure-track: 50
•Fixed-term Research/Clinical: 82
Total Full-Time Equivalent: 125
PRIMARY RESEARCH INITIATIVES
The School of Nursing is known for its high quality, innovative research programs which are concentrated in five areas:
•Preventing and managing chronic illness and other major health threats
•Reducing health disparities
•Improving healthcare quality and patient outcomes
•Understanding biobehavioral and genetic bases of health and illness
•Developing innovative ways to enhance science and its clinical translation
TOTAL FUNDING FOR THE PAST YEAR
•$4.3 million
FUNDED STUDIES
•Preventing type II diabetes in America’s youth
•Reducing depressive symptoms in low-income mothers
•Creating symptom-focused diabetes care for African-American women
•Observing parental feeding responsiveness in the development of early-childhood obesity
•Creating interventions supporting breast cancer survivors coping with uncertainty
•Integrating qualitative and quantitative research findings
•Helping women prisoners reduce HIV risk after release
•Analyzing the relationship of nurse staffing and hospital financial performance to quality of care
•Partnering children and their parents to manage weight
•Helping older African American survivors cope with surviving cancer
•Studying the relationship between sleep disturbances and cognitive decline in the elderly
•Studying improvements in quality care in home health
•Improving the nursing work environment
•Developing a measure of emotional care in nursing homes
•Protecting genetic privacy through risk assessment
•Improving end-of-life care for African Americans with end-stage renal disease
•Exploring the experience of a negative prenatal diagnosis
PRIMARY SERVICE INITIATIVES
•Twenty-five faculty members are involved in some type of clinical practice
•The School of Nursing’s Center for Lifelong Learning offered 200 programs for approximately 5,000 participants for 2008-2009
•Faculty and students provided more than $1 million in direct care through the N.C. Area Health Education Centers
CONTACT
Kristen M. Swanson, RN, PhD, FAAN
Dean & Alumni Distinguished Professor
Carrington Hall, CB 7460
Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599-7460
Phone: 919-966-3731
Fax: 919-966-1280
kswanson@email.unc.edu
http://nursing.unc.edu
ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION
