Doctor of Philosophy program curriculum

Doctoral students take core courses (NRS 201, 202, 203, 205, 291, an Informatics course and a required series of courses in research methods) plus electives and must complete a dissertation.

NRS 201—Health Status and Care Systems (4 units): Comparative health status data, major current health issues globally, nationally and regionally. Theoretical perspectives on social, political, economic determinants of health. Health-care systems examined, linked to data, and evaluated in regard to outcomes. Aging, rural, ethnic minority populations highlighted.

NRS 202—Implementation Science (4 units): Change processes in health care from political, historic, economic and sociologic frameworks. Historic and current examples of transformative change in the health-care system. Skills for system transformation through health policy, practice, research and education are emphasized.

NRS 203—Leadership in Health Care (4 units): Critical examination of leadership from a variety of theoretical and philosophical perspectives; focuses on specific challenges in health care and leadership at various levels, e.g., patient, organizational and policy levels.

NRS 205—Research Design in Nursing and Health Care (4 units): Major types of quantitative and qualitative research design and their application to nursing and health-care research. Implications of choosing alternative research designs and critical analysis of philosophical underpinnings. Evaluation of control and validity and sampling, instruments to measure health concepts.

NRS 291—Doctoral Seminar (2 units): Focus on the theory, research and knowledge relevant to one of two fields of emphasis: population health or health systems. Emphasis placed on reading, critique and synthesis of classic and cutting-edge research in nursing and health care.

NRS 299—Research and Writing (variable units): Students in Nursing Science and Health-Care Leadership graduate programs conduct research and writing under the supervision of a faculty member.

NRS 299D—Dissertation Research and Writing (variable units): Students in Nursing Science and Health-Care Leadership graduate programs conduct dissertation research and writing under the supervision of a faculty member.

CLH 205—Introduction to Medical Statistics (4 units): Focus on biomedical applications of statistical methods in clinical, laboratory and population medicine. Microcomputer applications of statistical procedures in population medicine examined.

NRS 298—Applied Health Informatics (4 units): Within the conceptual framework of the Foundation of Knowledge model, this course integrates nursing science, information science, computer science and cognitive science to acquire, process, generate, and disseminate knowledge. Informatics applications that affect health care and nursing will be emphasized.

NRS 301—Methods for Teaching Nursing and Health Sciences: Use of Simulation (4 units): Simulation education reviewed as a teaching tool in nursing and health sciences; explores how to integrate simulation into individual courses. Emphasis placed on simulations that include clinical judgment, teamwork, and interdisciplinary communication.

NRS 302—Methods for Teaching Nursing and Health Sciences: Curriculum and Instruction (4 units): Best practices in adult learning, performance-based curriculum models and instructional design. Experience in planning student-centered learning activities that are engaging and effective in achieving desired student performance. Use of distance technologies, case-based teaching, clinical teaching and role of clinical teacher.

NRS 303—Methods for Teaching Nursing and Health Sciences: Assessment/Evaluation of Learning (4 units): Application of approaches, processes, and tools for assessing adult learning, especially those that assess the student's ability to use knowledge/skills in practical situations. Other topics include: design of performance evaluation tasks, instructional rubrics, use of portfolios, grading and reporting.

Both doctoral and master’s degree students are required to take a graduate-level course in Health Informatics, such as:

• NRS 298—Introduction to Health Informatics in Nursing (4 units)
• HEALTH INFORMATICS 210—Introduction to Health Informatics (4 units)
• HEALTH INFORMATICS 211—Telemedicine (4 units)

Doctoral students will be required to take 12 units of appropriate analytic method series courses such as the following:

• STATISTICS 100—Applied Statistics for Biological Sciences (4 units) (Math 16B or an equivalent is prerequisite)
• STATISTICS 108—Regression Analysis (4 units) (STA 13, 32, 100, or 102 is prerequisite) 
• STATISTICS 138—Analysis of Categorical Data (4 units) (STA 106, 108, 130B or 131B is prerequisite)