Fundamentals of Nursing

Course Description

NUR1020C – Fundamentals of Nursing is the first nursing course in a Florida Associate in Science nursing program and the point at which a student stops being a pre-nursing student and starts being a nursing student. It combines classroom instruction, skills laboratory practice, and supervised clinical experience, and it is where the profession's core habits — assessment, documentation, safety, and accountability — are established.

Institutions carry this content two ways. Some use a combined NUR1020C at 5 credits (Florida SouthWestern, FSCJ); others split it as NUR1020 at 3 credits / 48 lecture hours plus NUR1020L at 2 credits / 112 clinical hours (Broward). Daytona State titles it Nursing Process I and Lab. Either way the time commitment is far larger than the credit line suggests — see Special Information.

Content covers nursing as a profession — history, roles, scope, and the wellness-illness continuum; the nursing process as the discipline's problem-solving framework: assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, evaluation; health assessment — history taking, vital signs, and head-to-toe examination; communication and the therapeutic relationship; documentation and the electronic health record; safety — falls, restraints, and error prevention; infection control and asepsis; fundamental skills — hygiene, mobility, positioning, elimination, wound care, and specimen collection; medication administration including dosage calculation and the rights of administration; nutrition; oxygenation and basic respiratory care; comfort and pain; HIPAA and patient privacy; and legal and ethical foundations of practice.

Clinical experience is supervised and typically placed in adult and geriatric settings — long-term care, rehabilitation, or medical-surgical units — where students practice fundamentals on real patients under faculty supervision.

Offered at approximately 14 Florida institutions with Board-approved associate degree nursing programs.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe nursing as a profession, its history, roles, and scope of practice.
• Apply the nursing process as a framework for patient care.
• Perform a systematic health assessment including history and physical examination.
• Measure and interpret vital signs and recognize abnormal findings.
• Formulate nursing diagnoses and measurable patient-centered goals.
• Establish therapeutic communication with patients and families.
• Document assessments and interventions accurately and legally.
• Apply HIPAA requirements and protect patient health information.
• Apply principles of asepsis and infection control including standard precautions.
• Implement patient safety measures including fall prevention and safe transfer.
• Perform fundamental nursing skills including hygiene, mobility, and elimination care.
• Perform basic wound care and specimen collection.
• Calculate medication dosages accurately and administer medications using the rights of administration.
• Assess and manage pain and promote patient comfort.
• Describe nutritional needs and assist patients with nutrition and hydration.
• Apply legal and ethical principles including the Florida Nurse Practice Act to clinical decisions.
• Provide safe, supervised care to adult and geriatric patients in a clinical setting.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe cultural considerations and provide culturally sensitive care.
• Describe end-of-life and palliative care principles.
• Describe delegation and supervision within the nursing team.
• Use clinical simulation and describe its role in nursing education.
• Describe evidence-based practice and how nursing research informs care.
• Describe self-care and strategies for managing the demands of nursing.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The profession of nursing — history, roles, education pathways, and scope.
• The nursing process — assessment through evaluation.
• Health and wellness — the wellness-illness continuum and health promotion.
• Health assessment — interview, vital signs, and head-to-toe examination.
• Communication — therapeutic technique, barriers, and handoff reporting.
• Documentation — charting standards, EHR use, and legal implications.
• Safety — falls, restraints, environmental hazards, and error prevention.
• Infection control — chain of infection, asepsis, standard and transmission-based precautions.
• Hygiene and skin integrity — personal care and pressure injury prevention.
• Mobility and body mechanics — positioning, transfer, and ambulation.
• Elimination — bowel and bladder care, catheterization basics.
• Medication administration — dosage calculation, routes, and the rights.
• Nutrition — assessment, diets, and feeding assistance.
• Oxygenation — respiratory assessment and basic oxygen therapy.
• Comfort and pain — assessment tools and non-pharmacologic measures.
• Legal and ethical practice — the Florida Nurse Practice Act, HIPAA, and patient rights.
• Clinical practicum — supervised care in adult and geriatric settings.

Optional Topics

• Cultural competence in care.
• End-of-life and palliative care.
• Delegation and team nursing.
• Simulation-based learning.
• Evidence-based practice.
• Nurse self-care and resilience.

Resources & Tools

• Fundamentals of Nursing (Potter & Perry), Elsevier — the most widely adopted text.
• Fundamentals of Nursing: The Art and Science of Person-Centered Care (Taylor), Wolters Kluwer.
• Calculate with Confidence (Morris) or a comparable dosage calculation text — programs typically require a separate math competency examination.
• Clinical skills laboratory — hospital beds, manikins, simulation equipment, and supply kits.
• ATI or HESI — standardized assessment and NCLEX-preparation packages; most Florida ADN programs require one and it carries real weight in grading.
• Florida Board of Nursing — the Nurse Practice Act, program approval lists, and licensure requirements.
• Chapter 464, Florida Statutes — the Nurse Practice Act; freely available on Online Sunshine.
• NCSBN — NCLEX-RN test plan and the Nurse Licensure Compact.
• Clinical affiliates — long-term care, rehabilitation, and medical-surgical units.

Career Pathways

• Registered Nurse (SOC 29-1141) — the credential this program leads to, via NCLEX-RN and Florida licensure.
• Medical-Surgical, Geriatric, and Long-Term Care Nurse — where most new ADN graduates begin.
• Hospital Staff Nurse — the Florida systems hiring continuously: AdventHealth, Orlando Health, BayCare, HCA Florida, Baptist Health, Tampa General.
• Home Health and Hospice Nurse — substantial Florida demand given the state's demographics.
• School Nurse, Public Health Nurse, and Correctional Nurse.
• RN-to-BSN — many Florida state colleges offer the BSN completion degree, and a growing share of employers prefer or require it.
• Advanced practice — Nurse Practitioner, CRNA, or Nurse Midwife, all requiring graduate education.

Special Information

⚠ Credits understate the time badly — count contact hours

Broward College's split shows what the 5-credit combined version actually contains:

A student reading "5 credits" and planning like it is a 5-credit lecture load is off by roughly a factor of three. Add preparation, care plans, skills practice, and clinical travel time on top. Nursing students routinely and correctly report the first clinical term as the heaviest semester they have taken, and students who keep full-time work through it are the ones most likely to fail out. This is the same pattern the dental hygiene clinical ladder shows — in Florida health programs, compare contact hours, never credits.

Florida licensure requires more than the degree

Graduation from a Florida Board of Nursing-approved program is only the first step. A graduate must pass the NCLEX-RN, complete a Level 2 background screening under Chapter 435, F.S., and apply to the Board for licensure. Program approval and accreditation (ACEN or CCNE) are different things, and a program can be state-approved without being nationally accredited — which matters if the student later wants an RN-to-BSN pathway or military or federal employment. Check both before enrolling.

Florida is a Nurse Licensure Compact state

Florida participates in the Nurse Licensure Compact, so a Florida multistate license permits practice in other compact states without additional licensure, and nurses holding a compact license elsewhere may practice in Florida. This is genuinely useful for travel nursing and for telehealth, and it is worth understanding before licensure, since a multistate license requires the applicant's primary state of residence to be Florida.

Program admission is competitive and separate from college admission

Being admitted to the college does not admit anyone to the nursing program. Florida ADN programs are limited-access, with separate applications, prerequisite GPA thresholds, and an entrance examination (commonly the TEAS or HESI A2). Prerequisites typically include anatomy and physiology with laboratories, microbiology, and English composition — Broward requires BSC2085, BSC2085L, BSC2086, BSC2086L, and ENC1101 at a C or better. Corequisites often run alongside, so the term is fuller than the nursing course alone.

Clinical requirements come with real prerequisites of their own

Before a student may set foot in a clinical facility they generally need a Level 2 background screening, drug screening, immunization records including annual influenza, a physical examination, CPR certification at the healthcare-provider level, and liability insurance. These take time and money, and a delay in any one of them can cost clinical days that must be made up. Start them the moment the acceptance letter arrives.

Numbering and title variation

The course appears as NUR1020C (combined), as NUR1020 plus NUR1020L (split), and under the titles Fundamentals of Nursing, Fundamentals of Nursing I, Nursing Process I, and Nursing Concepts: Health and Wellness Across the Lifespan I. SCNS equivalency applies to the same number at the same level, never across numbers. Nursing programs are cohort-based and sequential, so transferring mid-program is rarely practical regardless of how the numbers align.