University of Hawaii at Hilo

The Baccalaureate Nursing Program supports the mission of the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in providing a learning environment that is responsive to the needs of a diverse student population and that stresses rigorous high quality education in a caring, personalized atmosphere. This educational experience encourages student-faculty interactions and offers hands-on learning and leadership opportunities. The Nursing Program emphasizes life long learning and teaches students to deliver culturally congruent nursing care in a rural environment.

The Bachelor of science in Nursing program at the University of Hawaii at Hilo (UHH) School of Nursing (SON) meets the state education requirements for a Registered Nurse license in the state of Hawaii. The UHH SON has not determined if the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program meets the state education requirements in any other state, any U.S. Territory, or the District of Columbia.

Admission into the program is very competitive and is based on student grades in the Natural Science grades (CHEM 141, NURS 348, NURS 203, BIOL 243/L, BIOL 244/L, BIOL 275/L) and TEAS scores. NS courses may be taken a maximum of 2 times. The ‘BSN Recommended Class Scheduling’ in the menu to the right maps out the courses that are required during the first 2 years, and the final 2 years while in the program.

The Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) is a terminal degree in nursing focusing on nursing leadership and application of research and practice. The DNP is also designed to prepare the nurse at an advanced level of nursing practice specifically as a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) and as leaders and administrators for health care organizations. The program emphasizes the development of the student’s capacity to impact the clinical setting as leaders and educators and to utilize clinical research to improve and transform health care. Our program is based on the understanding that nurses provide services which include the direct care of individual clients, transcultural nursing care, management of the care for rural populations, administration of nursing systems, and development and implementation of health policy. The program encompasses health economics, cultural diversity, chronic care management, health promotion, and disease prevention in rural communities and will create a cadre of new nursing faculty who can immediately address the nursing faculty shortage. Advanced practice nurses with practice doctorates will address significant practice issues in a scholarly way, adopt broad system perspectives for health promotion and risk reduction, and act as agents of change that transform client/community care, participate in the on-going evaluation of health care outcomes, and assist in the translation of research that leads to positive nursing practice changes.