
Health Sciences programs provide the knowledge and skills needed for students seeking a career as a Registered Nurse. Completion of the RN program requirements provides the student with the credentials needed to test for licensure as a Registered Nurse. For more information about Snead State’s Health Science programs, contact nursing@snead.edu.
Mission
The mission of the nursing programs of the Alabama Community College System is to prepare graduates to practice safe, competent, patient-centered care in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing health care system. We seek to provide full and equal access to opportunities for educational success to meet the community needs.
Philosophy
We believe that nursing is a dynamic profession, blending science with the use of evidence-based practice and clinical reasoning and the art of caring and compassion to provide quality, patient-centered care. We believe learning is an interactive process in which faculty and students share responsibility to meet program outcomes. We believe in using educational methods that are current and supportive of students in the teaching and learning environment, with the presentation of information from simple to complex. Nursing is guided by standards of practice and standards of professional performance. Standards reflect the values and priorities of the nursing profession. Therefore, we have integrated competencies from the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) and National League of Nursing (NLN) into our philosophy as part of our core values.
QSEN Competencies:
- Patient-Centered Care: Recognize the patient or designee as the source of control and full partner in providing compassionate and coordinated care based on respect for patient’s preferences, values, and needs.
- Teamwork and Collaboration: Function effectively within nursing and inter-professional teams, fostering open communication, mutual respect, and shared decision-making to achieve quality patient care.
- Evidence-based Practice: Integrate best current evidence with clinical expertise and patient/family preferences and values for delivery of optimal health care.
- Quality Improvement: Use data to monitor the outcomes of care processes and use improvement methods to design and test changes to continuously improve the quality and safety of health care systems.
- Safety: Minimizes risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance.
- Informatics: Use information and technology to communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error, and support decision making.
NLN Competencies:
- Human Flourishing: Advocate for patients and families in ways that promote their self-determination, integrity, and ongoing growth as human beings.
- Nursing Judgment: Make judgments in practice, substantiated with evidence, that integrate nursing science in the provision of safe, quality care and that promote the health of patient within the family and community context.
- Professional Identity: Implement one’s role as a nurse in ways that reflect integrity, responsibility, ethical practices, and an evolving identity as a nurse committed to evidence-based practice, caring, advocacy, and safe, quality care for diverse patients within a family and community context.
- Spirit of Inquiry: Examine the evidence that underlies clinical nursing practice to challenge the status quo, questions underlying assumptions, and offer new insights to improve the quality of care for patients, families, and communities.
Accreditation
The Associate Degree Nursing Program at Snead State Community College at the Boaz campus, located in Boaz, Alabama is accredited by:
The Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, Inc. (ACEN)
3390 Peachtree Road NE – Suite 1400, Atlanta, GA 30326
(404) 975-5000
The most recent accreditation decision made by the ACEN Board of Commissioners for the Snead State Associate Degree Nursing Program is Continuing Accreditation.
The nursing program also maintains approval from the
Alabama Board of Nursing (ABN)
770 Washington Ave, Montgomery, AL 36104
(334) 293-5200