While every nursing program is different and can be personalized with electives, they tend to share a core set of courses designed to equip students with essential knowledge and skills. After all, no matter where you study, you must be prepared to pass your nursing exams, earn your license, and succeed in your future career as a practicing nurse.
Alongside your clinical rotations, these foundational classes will teach you how to communicate effectively with patients, collaborate with healthcare teams, and provide high-quality care.
Here are 10 of the most common classes you’ll encounter on your path to becoming a nurse.
Introduction to Nursing
Sometimes a prerequisite and sometimes contained within a nursing program’s curriculum, introduction to nursing provides a bird’s eye view of nursing as a whole. You can expect to learn about what nurses do (and don’t do), relevant ethics and laws, the US healthcare system, and the history of nursing, among other topics.
Introduction to Nursing also provides an overview of your future nursing classes and what is expected of you as a student. You may engage in some basic hands-on or lab work.
In Practice
Introduction to nursing is the foundation on which all of your other nursing education is built. The broad overview of the subject provided by this class allows you to make an informed decision about your academic and career goals early on.
Health Assessment
Health assessment is essential to every nursing program – and every nurse’s job. This involves learning about and analyzing patients’ health histories.
The curriculum includes “interviewing” skills, meaning how to effectively talk to patients about their health histories, including genetic risks, socioeconomic and environmental factors affecting their health, psychological and developmental challenges, and other issues that impact people’s mental and physical well-being. It also covers how to take that information and make determinations about current and future health problems.
A health assessment class may involve lectures, discussions, and practicing with classmates, in simulated settings, or with volunteers.
In Practice
Nurses need to understand everything affecting a patient’s health and well-being, which means discussing, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from their health histories. This isn’t as simple as checking off boxes; it involves in-depth discussions to ensure you have the whole picture before talking to a patient about current issues and future risks.
Pharmacology
Pharmacology is the study of how medications work and what they do in the body. In this class, you’ll learn about medical terminology (including root words, prefixes, and suffixes), relevant math, ethics and safety, how drugs interact with each other and food, and how medications are administered, among other details that can affect your patients’ medical treatments.
Many nurses consider this one of the most challenging classes during their education. Developing study skills that work best for you can be a huge help. (Pro tip: Flash cards may be a good option for this vocabulary-heavy class!)
This class is often offered as a prerequisite to a nursing program, meaning you must pass it before applying to nursing school.
In Practice
Nurses need to fully understand how their patients are being treated, dispense medications appropriately, and be able to recognize when something isn’t quite right – and intervene when something goes awry. You’ll also have to talk to patients, families, doctors, and pharmacists about the drugs used.
Pathophysiology
Pathophysiology builds upon anatomy and physiology coursework, focusing on diseases and how they affect the body. As the knowledge of medical conditions is vital in other nursing courses, introductory pathophysiology may be a prerequisite to your nursing program to ensure you have the basics down. Your nursing school may require an advanced pathophysiology course while in the program.
It’s not possible to know everything about every single illness. So, pathophysiology typically focuses on common diseases affecting different systems within the body.
When you complete this course, you should be able to recognize and explain the causes and symptoms of different illnesses, determine the best treatments, discuss risk factors, and more.
In Practice
Nurses are often the first to dive into patients’ concerns, and efficiently recognizing symptoms and possible diagnoses can ensure fast and appropriate treatments. This could also help staff prioritize patients with the most dire needs in busy emergency rooms or urgent care centers.
Gerontology
Gerontology, sometimes called gerontological or geriatric nursing, covers the needs of older adults. Age isn’t a disease or disorder, but the biological, social, and psychological factors associated with aging affect health.
Much of a gerontology course focuses on the external challenges associated with age. You’ll learn to recognize ageism, understand the effects of interpersonal relationships (or the lack thereof) on older adults’ mental and physical health, and how to recognize medical issues commonly associated with aging – including dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Gerontology also covers the signs of elder abuse and how to ensure your patients’ safety.
In Practice
Most areas of healthcare aren’t restricted to any one age group, so you’ll likely spend a good deal of time with older adult patients. That age group has unique needs, and nurses need to be able to communicate with, diagnose, and treat these patients effectively.
Community Health
Community health is the study of the health of populations, not just individuals. In this course, you’ll learn to look at data to recognize patterns or particular challenges within a specific location. Community health also covers how to best care for patients from all cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and other diverse backgrounds. You’ll also learn to examine environmental factors and their effects on the population.
Communication skills are a significant focus in community health courses. Nurses working in community health need to advocate for themselves and their patients to decision-makers, discuss and affect change in their organizations, and teach community members about health and wellness.
Community health classes also provide instruction about research, data analysis, and the use of evidence to improve community and patient outcomes.
In Practice
Whether a nurse works in a practice with one patient at a time or in a public health organization that focuses on the nearby population, the community surrounding their workplace affects their work. Recognizing how people, the environment around them, and healthcare overlap can inform your treatment and education methods and help you advocate for your and your community’s needs.
Nutrition
Nutrition courses in nursing school discuss how what people eat, attitudes toward food, and nutrition-related public health concerns affect health and wellness. You’ll learn about nutrient categories, how appropriate nutrition affects overall health and chronic illnesses, socioeconomic and cultural issues related to food, and more food- and vitamin-related issues. Physical activity and weight will also be covered.
Nurses in nutrition courses not only learn about food and exercise; they also learn about micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) challenges. People who eat healthfully may still lack micronutrients – or have too much of a certain micronutrient – and must adjust accordingly.
In Practice
Nurses need to recognize when health issues are caused or exacerbated by nutritional challenges. Often, they’re tasked with educating patients about meeting their nutritional needs. Being able to fully understand how nutrition affects the body helps ensure you can best support your patients.
Maternal and Infant Health
Maternal and infant health classes focus on caring for patients during pregnancy, labor, and the antepartum phase, as well as the needs of their infants. The childbearing family is also discussed, as they all affect the patients.
The course covers patients’ physical and psychological needs with respect to their social, cultural, and other norms throughout pregnancy and beyond. Nursing students learn to educate their patients and their families about pregnancy, childbirth, and the early days of parenting.
Difficult topics like newborns in distress and handling grief in patients are also covered, as are legal and ethical issues within maternal and infant care.
In Practice
Whether or not you work in obstetrics or pediatrics, chances are you’ll work with pregnant patients and infants at some point. They have different needs than other members of the population, and you need to be able to address those in ways that meet their unique situations.
Mental Health Nursing
Mental health nursing classes cover how mental health can affect patients. This class covers mental health challenges, mental illnesses, cognitive impairments, eating disorders, and more. You’ll also discuss how mental health affects physical health (and vice versa), the role of interpersonal relationships in mental health needs, and empathetic, holistic patient care strategies.
In addition to the direct treatment of patients with mental health concerns, you’ll learn about the laws and ethics surrounding mental health issues in medical care. The class also covers how and when to engage families in conversations about their loved one’s mental health while keeping HIPAA in mind.
In Practice
Even if you don’t decide to work in the psychiatric field, mental health nursing is used throughout your nursing practice. Mental health affects people of all ages and backgrounds, and it’s essential to recognize struggles – even if your patients aren’t bringing them up directly – and alter your communication and treatment according to individual needs.
Microbiology
Microbiology studies microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protozoa. During this class, you’ll learn how to recognize different types of microorganisms, discuss how they can cause pathology and infections, and explain how to treat related illnesses. The class also discovers how microbes may become resistant to drugs.
In addition to the illnesses and their treatments, you’ll learn about disease prevention and how to avoid the spread of ailments throughout your healthcare facility.
Microbiology class may include a lab portion in which you get to put your knowledge into practice.
In Practice
Nurses see sick people every day. Even if you work in a field that focuses on injuries, you come into close contact with many people – some of whom may be sick and either not tell you or not be aware of it. In addition to recognizing illnesses (which they learned about in pathology), nurses need to know what microorganisms may be at fault for the ailments and how to prevent, treat, and stop the spread of sickness.
