LA Nursing Curriculum

The Regional Nursing Curriculum Consortium (RNCC) is a group of LA Region Community College Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) program leaders and faculty. The group’s objective is to develop a universal ADN curriculum, integrated with BSN curriculum to enable students to complete an ADN and BSN concurrently. There are models of this in Kansas, Arizona and Riverside, CA. The RNCC would like to create and implement an ADN to BSN model in which each LA Region ADN program uses common curriculum of 70 units and the student co-enrolls in a fully articulated BSN program. ADN to BSN academic progression is a current focus of nursing education and industry. As more employers follow industry trends such as seeking Magnet Recognition Status, the preference is toward BSN prepared nurses. ADN graduates are slower in finding employment, and employers often require the ADN nurse to achieve a BSN within a specified time. The goal of the RNCC is to make the ADN graduate a preferred employee to the region’s healthcare employers; combining the strengths of the ADN graduate (representative of their community, diverse, clinically competent) with the academic rigor of the BSN.