About the Faculty of Nursing
Welcome to Memorial University of Newfoundland's Faculty of Nursing, where we follow an approach called strengths-based nursing to guide nursing practice in our undergraduate and graduate bachelor of science in nursing (BScN) programs.
In strengths-based nursing, the nurse's role is to provide information, support and advocacy for patients, families and others to promote health and facilitate healing. It's an approach pioneered at McGill University's Ingram School of Nursing and further developed by McGill professor, Dr. Laurie Gotlieb.
A strengths-based approach encourages nurses to recognize and work with the strengths of patients, their families and others, treating them with respect and listening to them as individuals with personalities, preferences and histories of their own.
Strong relational skills are integral to strengths-based nursing practice. The Faculty of Nursing uses a relational inquiry approach to help students develop relational and communication skills that emphasize compassion, curiosity, commitment, competence and a sincere interest in what is important to patients/clients.
Strength-based and relational inquiry approaches to nursing care underpin our concept-based undergraduate curriculum and are relevant to the leadership focus of the graduate programs. We actively engage students in their learning to enable them to apply course concepts to meaningful, real-life situations in classroom and clinical settings.
As a faculty we are committed to integrating Indigenous knowledge, and ways of knowing and being, into our undergraduate and graduate programs as we continue to adopt the important recommendations contained in the Truth and Reconciliation Report.