DNP AGPCNP Mission:

The DNP-AGPCNP program prepares highly qualified nurses for leadership positions across various healthcare domains, enabling them to provide diverse, inclusive, and equitable care to populations in their respective communities through critical thinking, evidence-based practice, and ethical principles. The students are prepared with the necessary skills to serve as Primary Care Nurse Practitioners on interprofessional health care teams for the Adult Gerontology population, focusing on health prevention and promotion to improve health outcomes and transform health care delivery.

  • Diversity - We strive to develop health professionals ready to serve diverse populations.
  • Inclusion - We embrace the uniqueness of each person, and we work collaboratively to bring our best service.
  • Equity - refers to the principles of fairness, justice, and impartiality. The goal of the Nurse Practitioner is to treat everyone equally, ensuring that all individuals have the tools and support they need to succeed, based on their unique circumstances and needs (NONPF).
  • Innovation - We are creative and open to change and will procure excellence.
  • Humility - Practicing humility allows us to appreciate the contributions of others and fosters a sense of empathy and understanding.
  • Empathy - We promote the use of the nurse practitioners’ abilities to take on another’s perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience.
  • Evidence-based practice - We are committed to scientific rigor, critical analysis, and sound reasoning in public health and practice. 
  • Community Engagement - We are committed to participating in and developing healthy communities.
  • Human Dignity - Nurse practitioner practice regards all human beings as being worthy and deserving of unconditional respect, regardless of age, sex, health status, social or ethnic factors, political ideologies, religious affiliation, or criminal history.
  • Social Justice - We promote fair balance in the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected.
  • Integrity - Nurse practitioners conform to the principles of acting honestly, fairly, and ethically while sticking to their role of caring for the needy.

G.1 Provide a Doctorate nursing education based on the concepts of advanced nursing practice to prepare Adult Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Providers to offer services to individuals and communities in diverse health care settings across the health-illness continuum, applying ethics, team-based, and interprofessional collaboration.

G.2 Develop competencies in critical thinking, communication, evidence–based decision making, scholarly inquiry, and advanced practice nursing skills to practice as primary providers of the Adult-Gerontology population, focusing on health prevention and promotion.

G.3 Integrate advanced practice nursing professional competencies to cultivate community engagement and community-based experiences as primary providers through public and private academic partnerships.

G.4 Serve as leaders in the development of new advanced practice nursing knowledge to promote health and healing in individuals, families, communities, and the global population.

G.5 Design, conduct, lead, and report health care evidence-based findings to generate nursing knowledge aimed at changing advanced nursing practice.

G.6 Enhance the use of information technology through the education process and promote ethical-legal responsibility and accountability as primary providers, while applying this technology.

G.7 Provide caring environments and academic partnerships that facilitate students’ learning to promote health and healing in individuals, families, communities, and the global population.

G.8 Promote an environment that supports inter-professional education in adolescents to older patients, including palliative and end-of-life care, evidence-based research, academic freedom, life-long learning, and a culture of continuous quality improvement.

G.9 Recruit and retain outstanding, culturally and linguistically diverse students and faculty, and doctoral degree faculty in Nurse Practitioner or in a specific specialty required for non-nursing courses.

G.10 Prepare leaders to promote the recognition of the nurse practitioner role as primary care providers, improve advanced-practice education, and develop health policy at the local, state, and national levels.

G.11 Manage nursing program resources with fiscal responsibility and explore new avenues for funding.

G.12 Improve the assessment and evaluation processes to promote the DNP-AGPCNP program effectiveness.

The expected student outcomes are those established by the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (NONPF) as Nurse Practitioner domains based on the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials (2021).

Upon completion of the DNP-AGPCNP program, graduates will be able to perform as adult gerontology primary care nurse practitioners who:

1. Integrate, translate, and apply established and evolving scientific knowledge from diverse sources as the basis for ethical clinical judgment, innovation, and diagnostic reasoning.

2. Uses evidence-based and best practices to design, manage, and evaluate comprehensive person-centered care that is within the regulatory and educational scope of practice. Fundamental to person-centered care is respect for diversity, differences, preferences, values, needs, resources, and determinants of health unique to the individual.

3.  Partners across the care continuum with public health, healthcare systems, community, academic community, governmental, and other entities to integrate foundational NP knowledge into culturally competent practices to increase health promotion and disease prevention strategies in the effective care of populations.

4. Generates, appraises, synthesizes, translates, integrates, and disseminates knowledge to improve person-centered health and systems of care.

5. Utilizes knowledge and principles of translational and improvement science methodologies to improve quality and safety for providers, patients, populations, and systems of care.

6. Collaborates with the interprofessional team to provide care through meaningful communication and active participation in person-centered and population-centered care.

7. Demonstrates organizational and systems leadership to improve healthcare outcomes.

8. Envisions, appraises, and utilizes informatics and healthcare technologies to deliver care.

9. Demonstrates the attributes and perspectives of the advanced-practice nursing profession and adherence to ethical principles while functioning as a committed equal partner of the interprofessional health care team.

10. Participates in professional and personal growth activities to develop sustainable progression toward professional and interpersonal maturity, improved resilience, and robust leadership capacity.