In September, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) announced upcoming opportunities for member feedback and engagement on the AACN Essentials. The Essentials documents are used to ensure quality in nursing programs offered at the baccalaureate, master's and doctoral (DNP) levels.

The AACN is using an accelerated process to update all three Essentials documents simultaneously to ensure that competency expectations are closely aligned and appropriately leveled.

Faculty are invited to the AACN Essentials Faculty Meeting on Wednesday, December 11 from 9 to 11 a.m. in Pearson 1011.

The agenda will be as follows:

• Welcome and confirmation of agenda

• An introduction to the foundational resources, which include:

  • AACN's Vision for Academic Nursing and

  • Englander, R., Cameron, T., Ballard. A.J., Dodge, J., Bull, J. & Aschenbrener, C.A. (August 2013). Toward a common taxonomy of competency domains for the health professions and competencies for physicians. Academic Medicine, 88(8), 1088-1094. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e31829a3b2b.

• Review copies or links to the draft Essentials domains and descriptors . Please remember this work is in DRAFT format.

• A showing of the video presentation prepared for the National Faculty Meeting.

• A facilitated group discussion using the set of questions. The group is asked to capture comments and the discussion as best as possible using one or more note-takers.

• Finally, a representative of the faculty will complete and submit the online survey to share our feedback on this preliminary work.