Curriculum

NURS3050
Narrative Matters in Health and Illness Experiences

This course draws on the memoirs of individuals and families, and privileges the concept of narrative – of story-telling – as a critically important yet consistently undervalued pedagogy for education, research, bioethics, policy generation, and healing. It challenges students to better understand the lived experiences of those they will serve, often at the most vulnerable moments of their lives. And it will help them understand the power of art, literature, and film and avoid the reductionist impulse in modern health care.

NURS1340
Health and Social Policy

This is an introductory course examining social problems in the context of contemporary health care in the United States. Topics include the organization and financing of health care; education for the health professions; imbalances in the supply and demand for health providers–the doctor surplus and nurse shortage; changing patterns of disease; dilemmas in the use of new medical technologies; health services needs and dilemmas across the life span; AIDS–the new pandemic; transmedical problems–the homeless, the mentally ill. Recommended for students planning careers in nursing, medicine, and other health professions, and those interested in social policy. There are no required prerequisites.

NURS3180
Race, Gender, Class and the History of American Health Care

This multidisciplinary course surveys the history of American health care through the multiple perspectives of race, gender, and class, and grounds the discussions in contemporary health issues. It emphasizes the links between the past and present, using not only primary documents but materials from disciplines such as literature, art, sociology, and feminist studies that relate both closely and tangentially to the health professions and health care issues. Discussions will surround gender, class-based, ethnic, and racial ideas about the construction of disease, health and illness; the development of health care institutions; the interplay between religion and science; the experiences of patients and providers; and the response to disasters and epidemics.Skills for document analysis and critique are built into the course as is the contextual foundation for understanding the history of health care. This course satisfies both the Society & Social Structures and the Histories & Traditions sectors for the Nursing Class of 2012 and beyond.

NURS3340
Public Policy and the Nation’s Health

This course examines health care and social policy from domestic and international perspectives. It is designed to engage undergraduate students in critical thinking about health policy issues as they affect our health care, employment, taxes, and social investments. The current national debate on health care reform is used as a frame of reference for examining the strengths and weaknesses of health care services in the U.S. from the perspectives of patients/families, health professionals, health services providers, insurers, employers, and public policy makers, and the pros and cons of a range of prescriptions for system improvement from across the political spectrum. About a third of the course focuses more specifically on global public health challenges and the policy strategies for reducing health disparities worldwide.

NURS5180
Nursing and the Gendering of Health Care in the United States and Internationally, 1860-2000

This course examines changing ideas about the nature of health and illness; changing forms of health care delivery; changing experiences of women as providers and patients; changing role expectations and realities for nurses; changing midwifery practice; and changing segmentation of the health care labor market by gender, class and race. It takes a gender perspective on all topics considered in the course. A comparative approach is used as national and international literature is considered. This focus is presented as one way of understanding the complex interrelationships among gender, class, and race in health care systems of the United States and countries abroad.