Accreditation
The University of New England's Nursing Program is accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN).
Contact ACEN
3343 Peachtree Road NE, Suite 850
Atlanta, Ga. 30326
(404) 975-5000
info@acenursing.org
www.acenursing.org
The program has also been approved by the Maine State Board of Nursing.
Experiential Learning
As a student in one of our School of Nursing and Population Health majors, you benefit from experiential learning activities that ensure you possess the knowledge, skills, and confidence to succeed in the field upon earning your degree and accepting your first professional position.
In addition to major coursework, all Public Health students are required to complete a 135-hour experiential learning or research practicum. You will engage in experiences that help ensure you can use your knowledge, and skills to succeed in the workplace or in a graduate program. These experiences are tailored to your interests and may take the form of internships, service-learning projects, research opportunities, or honors theses. Experiential learning occurs in years three and four of the program.
Resources
Clinical Simulation
The Clinical Simulation Program uses high fidelity patient simulators and patient actors to create a wide variety of learning opportunities in realistic settings. You learn to function as an individual and also as a member of an interdisciplinary health care team through these exercises. You face rarely seen cases, hard-to-diagnose cases, and other challenges of the nursing profession in the simulation labs so that when you face them in the field, you will know how to respond.
GLOBAL OPPORTUNITIES
Our Westbrook College of Health Professions also offers a unique opportunity for a Health Care Immersion Experience in Ghana, West Africa. The experience normally takes place in August and comprises an interprofessional group of students and faculty who deliver primary care and related services in the twin cities of Sekondi and Takoradi. You work closely with community health outreach workers and professionals from the Effia Nkwanta College of Nursing and Midwifery. The work involves interprofessional collaboration, community education, and academic and cross-cultural exchange.
Interprofessional Education
UNE is one of a handful of private universities with a comprehensive health education mission that includes medicine, pharmacy, dental medicine, nursing, and an array of allied health professions programs. You take part in interprofessional education initiatives that prepare you to work with other aspiring health care professionals to practice comprehensive and collaborative team-based care. In the simulation labs, and also in service-learning and clinical experiences you benefit from exercises that also include students from other UNE health professions programs.
Clinical Experiences
If you are in the traditional B.S.N. program, during your last four semesters you are deeply immersed in not only nursing coursework but clinical experiences that emphasize clinical judgment, health and human functioning, care and therapeutics, person and environment, and health care resources. If you are in the Accelerated B.S.N. program, you spend the entirety of your 17-month program both pursuing coursework and engaging in clinical experiences.
Typically, you spend one or two days per week in one of the area's leading hospitals or in a community setting. The different settings serve diverse populations and allow you to actualize the process of integrating theory and practice. Our clinical partners include New England Rehabilitation Hospital, Maine Medical Center, Southern Maine Medical Center, Midcoast Hospital and York Hospital. At these locations, you work under the direct supervision of a clinical faculty member in clinical experiences that include medical surgical nursing, gerontology, maternity, pediatrics and other specialized areas of care.
Upstream Practicums in Nursing
The purpose of the Upstream Practicums in Nursing Program is to offer UNE nursing students a refined community health nursing curriculum and accompanying meaningful clinical experience. The program works in partnership with Greater Portland Health, a federally qualified health center with nine sites serving vulnerable populations, including immigrants and refugees, low-income seniors, and Portland’s homeless population.