MSN Women's Health Care Curriculum

Nurse-Midwife/Nurse Practitioner Specialty

Program Philosophy

The focus of the nurse-midwifery specialty is to provide quality education that will be accessible to a diverse student population. The specialty emphasizes development of safe primary care providers to care for women throughout their life, and the newborn as appropriate, through the acquisition of knowledge and skills that are commensurate with current evidence.  Faculty are dedicated to preparing nurse-midwives with a strong foundation in primary care, research, theory and practice.  Faculty create an environment to foster adult learning, student self-motivation, professional ethics, transition to independent practice, and the concept that learning is a life-long activity.  The faculty believes that emphasis on normal processes of health is paramount to understanding disease, illness and dysfunction.  There is recognition that care involves bio-psycho-social-cultural-spiritual components of individuals, families and communities.  Teaching is accomplished within the framework of independent and collaborative practice between the midwife and client as well as with other health professionals.  Provision of care is on a continuous and comprehensive basis utilizing the hallmarks of midwifery as the framework for education and practice.  Students will accept responsibility to identify strategies that allow them an opportunity to learn and acquire the necessary skills for professional advanced practice as a midwife.

Program Format

The Nurse-Midwifery/Nurse Practitioner curriculum includes 59 semester units of graduate nursing coursework. The program can be completed in 2 years of full time study or 3 years with the first year being part time and the second and third years being full time.

Students complete the majority of the didactic coursework in a face to face classroom setting on the CSUF campus. Supervised clinical hours are completed each semester at partner clinical facilities. Clinical placements are facilitated by the CSUF Women's Health Care concentration leads. Clinical placements for the Women's Health Care program are located in Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Travel to assigned clinical sites is required as part of the program. Clinical courses require between 8 and 40 supervised clinical hours per week.