Focuses on integrating prior knowledge, using scholarly inquiry, and designing therapeutic nursing interventions to promote health and manage illness in children from infancy through adolescence in partnership with their families. Emphasis is placed on applying knowledge of growth and development and health issues of children to plan and evaluate family centered nursing care that maximizes the health of children in a caring environment. Ethical, legal, cultural and advocacy concepts are explored. The ANA Standards of Care for the Pediatric Nurse (1996) and ANA Maternal Child Health Standards and the objectives of Healthy People 2010 that pertain to children and families provide the framework for constructing evidenced- based contemporary nursing care for children and families.

Provides an opportunity for experiential learning designed to develop nursing skills unique to the care of children and families from an individual, family and aggregate perspective. The learner promotes healthy growth and development in children, shapes safe, supportive environments, provides anticipatory guidance to families, uses appropriate community resources, and provides evidenced-based, clinically competent therapeutic interventions for children who are healthy or experiencing an illness. The experiences in this course also foster professional development of accountability and responsibility for learning, identifying ethical and legal dimensions of practice, and integrating nursing care with that of other health care providers.