Pennsylvania Nurse, Front Page 2017 Issue 1 | Page 6

Moving from
Illness-Centered Care to
Wellness-Centered Care in
Undergraduate Nursing Education
The Impact of Nurse-Led Wellness Centers
Advances in healthcare and technology created an illness-focused healthcare system in the United States. This
has proven to be both costly and unsustainable. More recently, the pendulum has swung toward population
health through health promotion and wellness. A primary impetus for this change was the passage and enact-
ment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Additionally, two landmark Institute of
Medicine (IOM) reports, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health (IOM, 2010) and For the
Public’s Health: Investing in a Healthier Future (IOM, 2012) support wellness and health promotion. Bacca-
laureate nursing education must respond to this paradigm shift by including theoretical and clinical practice
experiences that integrate health promotion, wellness, and population health.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) articulated baccalaureate nursing education com-
petencies in the Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice (AACN, 2008). One
of the nine essentials speaks to clinical prevention and population health. The importance of this content was
also emphasized in the supplement Public Health: Recommended Baccalaureate Competencies and Curricular
Guidelines for Public Health Nursing (AACN, 2013). This supplement provided baccalaureate nursing faculty
additional didactic and clinical curriculum suggestions for enhancing population health and wellness into bac-
calaureate nursing education.
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