What We’re Protecting
What would nursing education look like if we designed it around the realities patients, communities, and working nurses face today?
That question helped guide the development of Antioch University’s nursing programs.
When Antioch established its Graduate School of Nursing and Health Professions, faculty had an opportunity to examine how existing nursing programs could evolve for a broader community of learners. Regina Prusinski, DNP, founding Director of Nursing Programs and founding Chair of the Family Nurse Practitioner program, helped lead that work.
The goal was not simply to move a curriculum from one institution to another. It was to build on a longstanding foundation while more fully integrating Antioch’s commitments to adult learners, community health, social responsibility, and healthcare equity.
That means preparing nurse practitioners to see the whole patient. A person’s health is influenced by more than symptoms or clinical history. Housing, food access, employment, transportation, geography, discrimination, and access to services can all affect health outcomes. Nurses must be prepared to recognize these conditions and respond with clinical skill, cultural humility, and informed advocacy.
It also means designing education for nurses whose own paths may not be linear. Many return to school after years in practice while balancing employment, family, and community responsibilities. Antioch recognizes that professional experience is an educational strength.
Students bring their experiences into the classroom, learn with colleagues whose paths may differ from their own, and deepen their understanding of the communities they serve. They then carry that knowledge back into clinics and healthcare systems, where it can influence individual care and broader practice.
Antioch’s autonomy gives faculty the ability to shape programs around the learners and communities they serve. It allows the University to ask what healthcare education should become, not merely how it has operated in the past.
This is how we keep Antioch, Antioch: by preparing nurses to care for people, understand systems, and improve health in the communities that depend on them.