MN: Admission Requirements

We welcome your application to the Master of Nursing (MN) program at the University of Washington Tacoma Nursing program. While applicants for the MN program are expected to have a bachelor’s degree in Nursing, the nursing program recognizes that RNs may have gained experience and knowledge in management and leadership, and/or community health nursing through academic, professional and personal experiences outside of a bachelor’s program in nursing.

RNs with baccalaureate degrees in fields other than nursing may demonstrate competency equivalent to the bachelor’s degree in nursing by writing a petition to the MN Admissions Committee. The petition must demonstrate knowledge and/or experience in the areas of (a) Management and Leadership and/or (b) Community Health Nursing acquired through your academic, personal, and professional experiences.

The MN Admissions Committee will review your petitions and recommend approval and admission to the MN Program, OR one of the following options:

• Taking specific course work in the UW Tacoma BSN Program as recommended by the Admissions Committee OR
• Taking and passing with a grade equivalent of B or better two Excelsior College examinations in Management and Leadership and/or Community Health Nursing.

If you would like to petition or ask for a waiver for the requirement to take the Excelsior exam in Management and Leadership, please address your experience and/or knowledge of management and leadership. Providing a range of relevant examples strengthens your petition; relevant examples may be your professional or volunteer experience with or continuing education in:

• Research and research utilization to improve outcomes or to improve quality of care
• Construction, implementation and evaluation of clinical pathways
• Quality assurance, including membership on unit or agency committees
• Active involvement in restructuring care, facilities, or how work is organized—whether at the level of the bedside or the organization
• Leadership as a professional nurse or as a professional or community volunteer; how you used your influence to alter others’ behaviors or attitudes, to build trust among coworkers, to bring a group to consensus or to facilitate their decision making, to communicate a vision
• Critical thinking and clinical decision making; consider examples from your own experience as well as the direction, counsel or supervision you provide to new graduate nurses, new employees, or nursing students; consider the ways in which you have improved your ability to analyze and consider options in making very complex or very sensitive decisions
• Legal and ethical issues in healthcare; consider examples from your experience with other healthcare professionals, or in discussion with families and patients; consider any involvement you have had with the "save 100,000 lives" campaign
• Management—whether managing staff, students, volunteers or material resources in the community or in a healthcare setting—influencing change by virtue of your position

If you would like to petition the requirement to take the Excelsior examination in Community Health Nursing, please describe your experience and/or knowledge of community health and working with aggregates, populations, or large groups of patients/clients. Examples of relevant experience and knowledge include:

• Health promotion and health education, for maintaining health as well as preventing exacerbation of chronic illness.
• Assessing the needs of groups, communities, or populations of all those in an elementary school, a census tract, or those with asthma, for example
• Creation of patient, client, family, or community health education material, programs or classes
• Assessment, diagnosis, intervention, evaluation at the community and/or population levels

Your petition is strengthened not only by your description of you professional experience, expertise and education, but also by examples. The following list of such examples should be of use to you as you prepare your petition.

• Course descriptions of academic, continuing education, or inservice education courses
• Clinical examples of research utilization or providing health education
• Descriptions of community projects
• An annotated (detailed, descriptive) resume that highlights your professional and community health experiences, whether at work or in your community, in your role as an employee or as a volunteer, with Girl Scouts, Red Cross high school volunteers, volunteer parent/RN providing classes in public or private schools or other educational settings
• In-service course descriptions and/or evaluation
• Professional certification, when the exam or requirements for such certification includes knowledge of relevant content or skills
• Committee membership
• Volunteer experience
• Membership and activities in professional organizations

The Excelsior website has additional information under Excelsior College Examinations.

If you have questions, please contact the Graduate Program Adviser at 253-692-4470.

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