Unifying a school of nursing: Developing a framework to guide nursing education

For one School of Nursing in a mid-sized, urban, private, liberal arts university in the upper Midwest, internal and external factors coalesced, requiring the reassessment/alignment of the baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral programs with professional standards/competencies and institutional mission/values. The development process of a new curricular framework to conceptually support the curriculum within the School of Nursing was reflective of participatory inquiry. The process closely followed the principles of the nursing complexity leadership model, complexity science, and improvement science. The new curricular framework grounds the School of Nursing's programming in a shared mental model through three functional definitions and six guiding constructs. The curricular framework development from this collaborative effort provides consistency for future curricular development and design across and within each program in the School of Nursing, shaping who we are, who we are educating, and the vision we see for our future.