Catalog 2025–2026

Nursing - School of Nursing

Director: Patricia Hensley, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC
Email: hensleyp@hawaii.edu

Nursing Office: University Classroom Building (UCB), Room 239
Tel: (808) 932-7067
Fax: (808) 932-7066

Website: hilo.hawaii.edu/depts/nursing/

Professors:

Associate Professors:

Assistant Professors:

Instructors:

Mission

The School of Nursing supports the mission of the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in providing a learning environment that is responsive to the needs of a diverse student population and that stresses rigorous high quality education in a caring, personalized atmosphere. This educational experience encourages student-faculty interactions and offers hands-on learning and leadership opportunities. The Nursing Program emphasizes lifelong learning and how to deliver culturally congruent nursing care in a rural environment. The UH Hilo B.S.N. mission is summarized below:

C—Culturally congruent care
A—Active learning, critical thinking
R—Responsive to needs of diverse students and communities
I—Invested in quality and research
N—Nursing professionalism
G—Global peace

Program Learning Outcomes

The program is committed to the following:

  1. Integrate, translate and apply existing and evolving knowledge from the natural,physical, social and nursing sciences and history as a foundation for clinical judgment and ethical nursing practice.
  2. Incorporate caring values and evidence-based practices in providing holistic, culturally responsive, person-centered nursing care for individuals, families, and populations across the lifespan and care continuum guided by the nursing process.
  3. Promote and advocate for equitable, culturally responsive population and environmental well-being while implementing and managing collaborative, effective, inclusive health promotion, disease prevention and policies for diverse populations in rural communities across the care continuum.
  4. Incorporate evidence-based practices in the equitable, culturally responsive, person-centered care of individuals, families, and communities in rural contexts while engaging in the ethical generation, synthesis, translation, application, and dissemination of nursing knowledge to improve health and nursing care.
  5. Apply quality improvement and safety culture principles at the individual and system levels to minimize risks of harm to patients and providers while integrating and disseminating evidence-based practices to optimize patient outcomes.
  6. Collaborate with patients, families, community stakeholders, professionals, and other healthcare team members, while sharing accountability and demonstrating effective team dynamic skills to optimize care and improve healthcare experiences and outcomes.
  7. Incorporate system-based thinking and strategies to guide evidence based, safe, cost effective, equitable nursing care and advocacy for diverse clients and populations across the care continuum.
  8. Evaluate and integrate data from communication, informatics, and healthcare technologies in accordance with evidence-based practice, professional, and regulatory standards in the delivery of safe, high-quality, efficient healthcare for diverse individuals, communities, and populations in a variety of settings.
  9. Form and cultivate a professional identity that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, civility, and professionalism grounded in ethical principles compliant with relevant laws, policies, and regulations.
  10. Assume responsibility for life-long personal and professional growth, learning, self-reflection, holistic self-care, ethical-legal nursing practice, and assertion of leadership.

The School of Nursing prepares students for careers in professional nursing. The UH Hilo School of Nursing is approved by the Hawaiʻi State Board of Nursing. The Baccalaureate program is accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN). The Doctor of Nursing Program is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). The degrees offered will be granted by UH Hilo upon the recommendation of the nursing faculty to those students who have successfully completed the prescribed curriculum.

Student Learning Outcomes

  1. As Providers of Care to:

    • Utilize the nursing process and critical thinking to assess, organize and prioritize transcultural nursing care for individuals, families, and communities and demonstrate clinical proficiency in the delivery of safe care.
    • Communicate and utilize technology effectively with healthcare providers and consumers to assess, plan, implement and evaluate health care.
    • Participate and advocate with communities to promote safe and healthy environments and positive changes in the healthcare delivery system.

  2. As Managers of Care to:

    • Manage and coordinate the care of individuals, families, and communities with complex health problems nusing creative and innovative evidence-based nursing practices.
    • Collaborate with other professionals while assuming a leadership role to provide preventive health education and interventions that will enhance, promote, maintain, and restore health to individuals, families and communities of all age groups and varied cultures.

  3. As Participant Investigators to:

    • Integrate theory, knowledge, and experiences gained from general education and nursing courses in refining critical thinking skills.
    • Interpret, and evaluate nursing research and begin to apply the knowledge and/or findings to nursing practice and the community.

  4. As a Member of the Profession to:

    • Assume personal responsibility for professional growth, such as membership in nursing organizations, attendance at professional meetings, or reading professional literature.
    • Administer nursing care in a safe, ethical, and legal manner in accordance with accepted state and national nursing standards.

  5. As a Promoter of Transcultural Caring to:

    • Incorporate caring values, beliefs, and practices of health and illness and work with individuals, families, and communities to provide competent culturally congruent care.

Curricula