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Mennonite College of Nursing

Doctor of Nursing Practice Plan of Study

Degree Requirements

The post-master's doctor of nursing practice (DNP) is a 34 semester hour program beyond the master's degree distributed among core courses (18 semester hours), applied data analysis and management (3 semester hours), clinical residency (6 semester hours), and the scholarly project (7 semester hours). The clinical residency is an in-depth clinical experience emphasizing DNP role development and expansion of clinical expertise. All students must successfully complete a scholarly project and the required dissemination endeavors. The project is designed to demonstrate identification and resolution of a practice problem through the scholarship of application. The project demonstrates synthesis of the student's work and provides the foundation for future scholarly endeavors.

Students must complete 360 clinical experience hours as part of the DNP curriculum. Students identify their own preceptors and sites for completion of these clinical experiences. Both preceptor and site must be approved by MCN and the site must have an affiliated agreement in place before the student can begin clinical experience. Often if a new facility is being used as a practicum site, affiliated agreements can take several months to secure. We strongly encourage students to begin thinking about who they might want to utilize as a preceptor as well as the site for each semester in the program and begin taking the steps necessary to secure that preceptor and submit necessary paperwork to allow for an affiliated agreement to be set up.

DNP Program Outcomes

The DNP program is based on national expectations and competencies for graduates of DNP programs as stated by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in the Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice.

The outcomes of the DNP program are to prepare graduates who

  • Engage in organizational and systems leadership to create practice environments that improve health care outcomes
  • Participate in evidence-based practice and clinical scholarship to improve health care practice and outcomes
  • Synthesize scientific, theoretical, and technological data from a variety of disciplines to improve health care systems and health outcomes for individuals and populations
  • Demonstrate leadership in development and implementation of health policy
  • Collaborate with intraprofessional and interprofessional teams to create change in health care systems

Instruction Methods

The DNP courses are online with limited on-campus "intensives." Students will be required to attend scheduled on-campus intensives throughout the program on the Illinois State University campus.

Computer Requirements

Upon entry to the doctoral program, it is expected that students will have prerequisite computer skills in word processing, email, attachments, PowerPoint, Excel, uploading and downloading documents, and internet use. Many doctoral courses are Web-based or Web-enhanced and students will be required to purchase or have access to specialized software for coursework.

Doctoral students may be required to either purchase or have access to specialized software, such as SPSS for data management classes and RefWorks or Endnote for compiling annotative bibliographies.

Course Requirements for the Post-Master's DNP

Co-requisites for the program include:

  • 640 post-BSN faculty supervised practice hours
    • The student who has less than 640 hours will take NUR 560 Advanced Nursing Practice Experience 1-4 hours. The number of hours required will be determined after review of post-BSN curriculum.
    • The student who does not meet the 640 practice hours requirement with NUR 560 will take master's level practice hours.
  • Epidemiology course at the master's level
  • Statistics at the master's level
    • The student who has completed a graduate statistics course more than one year prior to DNP admission, will have the option of taking a proficiency examination. If the proficiency examination is passed at 80% or higher, the student will have met this requirement.
    • The student who has not had a graduate level statistics course, chooses not to take the proficiency examination, or takes the proficiency exam but does not earn 80% or higher will need to enroll in NUR 409 Understanding Statisitics with MCN during the first summer of enrollment in the DNP program.

  • 509 Introduction to Nursing Informatics (3)

  • 511 Health Policy (3)

  • 562 Leadership in Health Care Systems (3)

  • 564 Evidence-Based Practice (3)

  • 565 Changing Health Care Systems: Quality Science and Management (prerequisites: Evidence-Based Practice and Finance Courses) (3)

  • Finance Course: Either 451 Financial and Resource Management of Health Systems (for APN DNP students) or 569 Advanced Financial and Resource Management for Health Care Systems (for NSA DNP students) (3)

  • 535 Applied Data Management and Analysis (3)

  • 539 Scholarly Project Design (development of scholarly plan, which includes needs assessment, updated literature review, and proposal outline) (1)

  • 543 Scholarly Project I (development) (to be taken concurrently with Clinical Residency I) (Prerequisite: Evidenced-Based Practice) (3)

  • 545 Scholarly Project II (implementation) (to be taken concurrently with Clinical Residency II) (Prerequisite: Evidenced-Based Practice) (2)

  • 547 Scholarly Project III (evaluation/dissemination) (to be taken concurrently with Clinical Residency III) (Prerequisite: Evidenced-Based Practice) (2)

  • 550 Clinical Residency I (to be taken concurrently with Scholarly Project I)1 (Prerequisite: Evidenced-Based Practice) (2)

  • 552 Clinical Residency II (to be taken concurrently with Scholarly Project II) (Prerequisite: Evidenced-Based Practice) (2)

  • 554 Clinical Residency III (to be taken concurrently with Scholarly Project III) (Prerequisite: Evidenced-Based Practice) (2)

Total Hours: 34

Plans of Study

Download a sample plan of study to visualize a timeline for your coursework. If applying to the summer term, students follow the traditional 7 semester plan of study. If applying to the fall term, students automatically default to following a 10 semester plan of study.

Download Plan of Study