Disciplinary knowledge in nursing education: going beyond the blueprints

Several formative documents have been developed recently under the auspices of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and are being used by colleges of nursing throughout the country to guide the curricula for educational programs preparing future nurses at or beyond the baccalaureate degree. The purpose of this paper is to report on an analysis of the degree to which nursing's disciplinary knowledge is reflected within these documents and to suggest ways to strengthen the focus on the discipline in our educational programs. We include an overview of nursing education in the United States, a summary of the current discourse in the literature explicating the focus of the discipline, and an analysis of the AACN documents in light of this discourse. There is insufficient emphasis in the formative documents on the disciplinary knowledge of nursing, and we encourage faculty to go beyond these blueprints to educate generalist, advanced generalist, and advanced specialty nurses who are grounded in the philosophies, theories, research, and practice models within the discipline of nursing.