ABSN—Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing

ABSN studentsThe UW School of Nursing offers a fast-track professional program to applicants who have already earned a bachelor’s degree and are looking for a second career in nursing. Our Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program allows you to complete our BSN curriculum in four back-to-back quarters through an academically-rigorous schedule—about half the time of our traditional two-year (six quarter) BSN program.

You will learn from our nationally-recognized faculty in the classroom and build foundational nursing skills in our Learning Lab, allowing you to practice nursing skills in a safe environment before performing them in a supervised clinical setting. You will also gain over a thousand hours of hands-on patient care experience under the guidance of licensed care providers at one of our 700+ respected community partnership sites, including Seattle Children’s Hospital and the top-ranked University of Washington Medical Center.

As a graduate from our Accelerated BSN program, you are prepared to embark on a successful new career in nursing.

Curriculum

Our four-quarter (autumn to summer) full-time program is designed for students who are self-motivated, detail-oriented, self-reflective and strongly committed. A solid foundation of science and humanities prerequisite coursework sets you up for success in our program.

The Accelerated BSN program includes:

  • academic coursework focused on critical thinking, care and therapeutics, and health care resources
  • in-class lecture with experienced nurse practitioners and researchers
  • clinical simulation exercises in our Learning Lab, and
  • supervised direct patient care in the field

ABSN Program Goals

The Accelerated BSN program prepares graduates to:

  1. Integrate concepts and ways of knowing from the arts and sciences in promoting health and managing nursing care across the wellness-illness continuum.
  2. Demonstrate value-based professional behaviors that integrate empathy, autonomy, integrity, social justice, equity as well as respect for diversity and inclusion, human rights, and human dignity through cultivating partnerships with patients, families and communities.
  3. Deliver and advocate for health equity through health promotion, care coordination and disease prevention strategies at the individual, family, community, and population levels.
  4. Apply leadership concepts, skills, and decision making in the provision and oversight of nursing practice in a variety of settings.
  5. Appraise, critically summarize and translate current evidence into nursing practice.
  6. Demonstrate integration of nursing scholarship, critical thinking, clinical decision making, and psychomotor skills necessary for the delivery of competent, safe, evidence-based, holistic, compassionate and high quality care to individuals, families, communities and populations across the lifespan.
  7. Translate principles of safety and quality improvement into the delivery of high quality care to individuals, families, communities, and populations.
  8. Utilize information, communication and patient care technology tools to facilitate clinical decision-making and the delivery of safe, effective and high quality nursing care.
  9. Demonstrate effective professional communication and collaboration within and across disciplines and with the public to optimize health outcomes.
  10. Demonstrate an understanding of how health policy, economic, legal, political, and socio-cultural factors influence the delivery of and advocacy for equitable health care.

Accreditation

The baccalaureate degree program in nursing at the University of Washington is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (http://www.ccneaccreditation.org).