When invited to teach a 2-semester critical care course at the master’s level several years ago, we were asked to modify the old course syllabi with attention given to realigning the courses in congruence with the American Association of Colleges of Nurses’ recommendation to incorporate curriculum content as advocated by specialty nursing organizations.1 Thus, the courses entitled “Critical Care Nursing I” and “Critical Care Nursing II” were revamped to include the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) Synergy Model for Patient Care. Table 1 presents the university’s program of study and Table 2 shows comparisons between both courses. About 64 schools offer the specialty of acute and/or critical care clinical nurse specialist (CCNS) and there is a dearth of information regarding CCNS masters’ programs2; in this article, we propose a successful CCNS curriculum model for consideration.
The 8 nurse dimensions of the Synergy Model serve as the...
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