Incorporating nursing theory into AACN Essentials domains for undergraduate nursing curricula

New standards for baccalaureate and graduate nursing education outlined in The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education (The American Association of Colleges of Nursing's [AACN], 2021), are moving nursing education to a competency-based format for both basic and advanced nursing curricula. As nursing education programs transition to competency-based processes, it is critical that nursing curricula focus not only on competency development itself, but also on the nursing theories and models, the ontological basis of our discipline, that ground nursing practice. In this paper, a selection of nursing formulations, that match each of the 10 Domains of the Essentials, is presented for review by undergraduate nursing faculty. These and other examples support nursing actions implemented in clinical practice. Nursing theories describe nurses' relationships with individuals, families, and communities and emphasize the interconnections among people, their surrounding environments, their health, and nursing's roles in optimizing patient care and collaborating with those cared for and with the interprofessional healthcare team. Therefore, it is important that nursing students appreciate some of the new and classic nursing theories and models and learn about the foundations and uniqueness of our discipline.