| Course | NR 524 Curriculum Development |
|---|---|
| Week | 1 |
| Paper type | Discussion post with two replies |
| Length | About 580 words |
| Format | Discussion post with APA 7 citations |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | MSN, Nurse Educator |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 524 Week 1
Week 1 Discussion: Initial Post
Our Catalog Promises Care "at the End of Life." The Board of Trustees Approved That Sentence in 2019; I Could Find It in One Lecture
The Promise
I teach nursing at a small community college serving a rural region, in its two-year registered nurse program. Our catalog describes the program in one paragraph, and its second sentence reads: "Graduates provide safe, compassionate care to patients and families across the lifespan, including at the end of life, in the hospitals, long-term care facilities and home health agencies of our region." I have read that sentence to applicants for years. This week I read it as a promise someone can be held to, and asked who wrote it and where the program keeps it.
Who Wrote It and Who Ratified It
The minutes show that the nursing faculty drafted the paragraph during a program review in 2018. The college curriculum committee approved it, and the board of trustees ratified it in 2019 as part of the catalog. It also appears in the self-study we submitted to our accreditor. So the promise has three signatures behind it: the faculty who wrote it, the committee that reviewed it and the board that made it official. If a graduate or an employer asked us to show where the program delivers "care at the end of life," all three bodies would expect us to answer.
Where It Is Carried
I searched our eight nursing syllabi for death, dying, end of life, palliative, hospice and grief. The results were thin. The first-semester foundations course has a one-hour lecture on death and dying. The mental health course covers grief in a week on loss. The complex care course lists an optional hospice clinical day that about a third of students choose. No course has an outcome about end-of-life care, and no exam or clinical evaluation tests it.
The gap matters locally. Two of the three hospitals that hire our graduates have no palliative care team, and the region's largest employer of our graduates is a home health agency with a hospice line. Our new nurses are likely to be the ones at the bedside when a patient is dying, often without a specialist to call.
This pattern is not unusual. A multisite survey of prelicensure faculty found that palliative care content was taught across several courses, mostly by lecture (Lippe, 2019). Spread thinly, it can look present on paper while no one course owns it. The national benchmark exists: AACN's CARES document identifies 17 competencies undergraduate nursing students should achieve in palliative care by graduation (Ferrell et al., 2016). Our catalog promises more than our courses deliver.
Question for the group: Pick one phrase from your program's catalog description. Which course would you point to if an employer asked where it is taught?
Reply to Monique
You quoted your program's promise that graduates are "leaders in community health" and found a leadership course in the last term. One question: does that course include community settings, or is the leadership content about hospital units? If the second, the promise and the course may share a word without sharing a meaning.
Reply to Faisal
You found your program's promise about cultural humility in five syllabi. That is more than most of us found. The harder question is whether any course assesses it. If none does, it may be in the same position as my end-of-life promise: mentioned often, owned by no one.
References
Ferrell, B., Malloy, P., Mazanec, P., & Virani, R. (2016). CARES: AACN's new competencies and recommendations for educating undergraduate nursing students to improve palliative care. Journal of Professional Nursing, 32(5), 327-333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.07.002
Lippe, M. (2019). Assessment of primary palliative care content within prelicensure nursing education: A multisite feasibility study. Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing, 21(5), 373-381. https://doi.org/10.1097/NJH.0000000000000535
The Chamberlain NR 524 Week 1 instructions
The opening discussion of NR 524 asks you to examine the mission, philosophy or program description of a nursing program you know and to consider how it shapes the curriculum. Prompts usually ask who developed the statement, what it commits the program to and where that commitment appears in courses. Replies must engage classmates' analyses. The strongest posts treat the catalog language as evidence: they quote a specific sentence, find the minutes or documents that show who approved it, and search the syllabi to see where it is actually taught and assessed. Name the gap if you find one, but keep the post factual rather than critical of colleagues. Cite at least one professional source in APA 7, and follow your section's word range and posting dates.
How this NR 524 Week 1 example is built
The sample post quotes the catalog's second sentence and states the writer's aim: to treat it as a promise, not as scenery. It traces the wording through faculty minutes, the college curriculum committee, the board of trustees and the accreditation self-study, naming who could be asked to show where the promise is kept. It then reports a search of eight syllabi for end-of-life terms and lists what turned up. A short paragraph explains why the gap matters in a region with few palliative services. The national undergraduate palliative competencies and a multisite study provide context. A question invites classmates to test their own catalog, and two replies probe a leadership promise and a cultural humility promise.
Where the points sit in the NR 524 Week 1 rubric
Discussion rubrics in this course usually give most weight to the initial post: accurate identification of the program statement, analysis of its role in the curriculum, and evidence drawn from program documents. Graders reward specifics, such as a quoted sentence and a named approval body, over general comments about mission. Use of a professional or scholarly source counts as support. Replies score when they push a classmate's analysis further, for example by asking whether a promised outcome is ever assessed. Tone and punctual posting make up the remainder. A post that finds and names a gap between promise and practice, factually and respectfully, generally ranks near the top of the analysis criterion.
NR 524 Week 1 help: mistakes that cost points
The most frequent weakness is a post that praises a program's mission without testing it against the curriculum. Quote the exact words and look for them in the courses. Another problem is naming the mission's author vaguely, as "the school"; find the body that approved it. Students also criticize colleagues' teaching rather than the curriculum's structure; keep the analysis on documents. Do not reveal confidential program information; catalog language and public accreditation summaries are safer ground. In replies, ask whether the classmate's promise is assessed as well as taught. Finally, keep it short. A focused post on one sentence and its path through the courses is more useful than a survey of the whole mission statement.
Get a NR 524 Week 1 example written to your instructions
Send us the prompt, the rubric, and any program documents your section points you toward, and we will write a custom NR 524 Week 1 example around exactly those. It returns inside 24-48h and the first one costs nothing, which lets you set your own draft beside a finished argument before anything goes into the classroom.
More NR 524 papers and MSN samples
- NR 524 Week 2: Curriculum Philosophy Statement
- NR 524 Week 3: Program Outcome Set
- NR 524 Week 4: Curriculum Map
- NR 524 Week 5: Sequencing Rationale
- NR 524 Week 6: Gap Analysis
- NR 524 Week 7: Revision Proposal
- NR 524 Week 8: Curriculum Evaluation Plan
NR 524 Week 1 questions, answered
Should the post name the program's accreditor?
Name it when the promise traces to an external standard, since that determines who may revise the wording and how slowly. Where the promise came from a local faculty decision instead, say so plainly rather than reaching for an accreditor to sound authoritative. Either way the finished post says how it knows, and it treats those two origins as different kinds of commitment.
How long should a Week 1 post be?
Expectations differ by section, so the requirement published in your classroom governs. Proportion matters more than length. A post spending most of its words restating the promise and one line testing it reads thin, while one that quotes briefly and then spends its middle on provenance and coverage reads finished at the same count.
Can I write about the program I graduated from?
Many sections allow it and the familiarity helps, provided the analysis rests on published documents rather than recollection. The risk runs opposite to ignorance: knowing a program well makes its holes invisible, because the writer fills them in from experience without noticing. Working from the catalog and the course descriptions keeps that habit visible and correctable.
Where can I find a free NR 524 Week 1 sample paper?
The catalog-promise post above, both replies included, is the complete NR 524 Week 1 sample and can be read at no cost. Faculty examining a different program statement can send its wording through the form for a post that tests it the same way.
Which program statement should the NR 524 Week 1 post examine?
Choose one sentence from a catalog, mission or philosophy that makes a checkable promise. The sample uses a promise about end-of-life care because it could be searched for in syllabi and tests.