Nursing RN to BSN Program Specifics

Students apply to the RN to BSN program as a transfer student, using the Transfer Student Common Application. Students can enroll to begin in fall or spring and can complete the program in as little as one year.

Apply Now as a Transfer Student

Application Requirements for All Candidate Types

The Nursing BSN portion of our College Catalog provides the specific application requirements for all candidates.

Course requirements and course descriptions can be found in the Nursing BSN portion of our College Catalog.

An Academic Rhode Map provides a semester-by-semester plan to help you toward on-time graduation.

Additional Resources

Nursing RN to BSN Advisement Form / Degree Requirements Checklist

Handbook for Undergraduate Students in Nursing

BSN Program Outcomes

• Demonstrate clinical judgment and innovation supported by established and evolving nursing knowledge, ways of knowing, and knowledge from other disciplines.
• Provide person-centered care across the organization/systems for patients, communities and populations, including family or important others to promote positive health outcomes.
• Integrate population health concepts spanning public health prevention to disease management to promote the improvement of equitable population health outcomes at the local, regional, national, and global levels.
• Demonstrate the ability to synthesize and apply current evidence that guides clinical practice and patient care decisions.
• Demonstrate knowledge and use of established and emerging principles of safety science in care delivery.
• Demonstrate interprofessional person-centered care that reflects core professional values including altruism, caring, ethics, roles and responsibilities, shared accountability, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Apply knowledge of systems, fiscal impact, social determinants of health, health promotion, improved access, social justice, and systemic racism to improve the health of diverse populations.
• Use information and communication technologies and informatics processes to improve the delivery of safe, high-quality, and efficient healthcare services in accordance with professional and regulatory standards.
• Acquire a sustainable professional nursing identity that includes self-reflective practice, advocacy, accountability, a collaborative disposition, and ethical comportment that reflects nursing’s characteristics and values.
• Demonstrate a capacity for leadership that includes a commitment to activities that foster personal health, resilience and lifelong learning.

In what ways is writing important to your profession?

Writing is essential to communicating as a nurse. Professional nurses write as care givers, advocates, teachers, and researchers. Nurses write to provide high quality safe care to patients and communities, to propose improvements to health care delivery and to promote changes in health care policy.

Which courses are designated as satisfying the Writing in the Discipline (WID) requirement by your department? Why these courses?

NURS 208W: Scholarly Inquiry and Practice in Nursing is the foundational WID course for the RN to BSN Program. In this course, students are introduced to the conventions of writing in nursing, APA formatting, and the role of evidence-based nursing practice. All nursing courses that follow NURS 208W continue to develop students’ writing skills over time.

What forms or genres of writing will students learn and practice in your department’s WID courses? Why these genres?

The forms of writing taught in the nursing program are clinical writing (or workplace writing), academic writing and reflective writing. Through various types of clinical writing, including care plans, charting and discharge summaries, nurses describe and document patient care. Clinical writing may also include promotional materials and policies developed to serve groups and communities. Professional nurses use academic writing to disseminate new knowledge in the discipline and promote evidence-based practice. Reflective writing, such as journaling and informal responses, serve as a way to learn (“writing to learn”) and as a means to self-understanding and professional growth.

What kinds of teaching practices will students encounter in your department’s WID courses?

Some of the teaching practices students will encounter will be journaling, low-stakes and high-stakes writing assignments, peer reviews, scaffolded assignments and opportunities for revisions and incorporating feedback into later drafts.

When they’ve satisfied your department’s WID requirement, what should students know and be able to do with writing?

Upon completion of the Bachelor of Science in nursing, graduates will be able to: 

• effectively communicate in writing in the various professional nursing roles
• accurately and precisely document professional practice in clinical settings
• prepare thoughtful and effective research papers in the discipline of nursing
• prepare oral and written presentations individually and collaboratively to achieve a specific purpose
• engage in reflective writing for personal professional development​​​​​​