Doctor of Nursing Practice

Contact: Susan Bradford, 330-972-7555 or sb14@uakron.edu

Now accepting applications for summer 2026

    Upcoming DNP Weekend Intensive Dates

Fall  Schedule 2025

August 23rd 2025

NURS: 705 Clinical Nurse Scholar I  (online synchronous)

August 24th 2025

NURS: 700 Information Management in Health Care (online synchronous)

NURS: 713 Advanced Leadership in Healthcare (in person)

NURS: 708 DNP Project I (online asynchronous)

October 18th 2025

NURS: 705 Clinical Nurse Scholar I (in person)

NURS: 713 Advanced Leadership in Healthcare (in person)

NURS: 708 DNP Project I (online asynchronous)

October 19th 2025

NURS: 700 Information Management in Healthcare  (online synchronous)

This post-master’s program is available to:

• Nurses with a master’s degree in nursing with an advanced practice focus from an accredited university. Admission criteria are available in The University of Akron Graduate Bulletin https://bulletin.uakron.edu/graduate/

This hybrid program is a blend of intensive face to face, intensive synchronous, and/or asynchronous learning modalities that are determined based on the course/content/semester. Students can complete the program in two years of study.

The University of Akron has a long tradition of being home to one of Ohio’s top ranked programs of nursing. One of the particular strengths of our DNP program is that  the courses at The University of Akron are taught by a complimentary blend of DNP and PhD prepared faculty, thus offering the student exposure to the best of both clinical/professional and academic/research scholarship. 

See the DNP program handbook for the curriculum and other information.

Program Outcomes

• Synthesize nursing history and interdisciplinary knowledge to inform education, practice, and research. Apply ethical decision-making, nursing theories, advanced specialty knowledge, and decision models to enhance clinical judgement and improve the delivery of quality care in diverse healthcare settings.
• Coordinate person-centered care in partnership with the person and their connection to others (family, important others, community) and the healthcare team, creating care plans that integrate personal preference, advanced nursing specialty-knowledge, evidence-based models, and emerging evidence to provide high-quality care across the health continuum.
• Manage population health, using evolving methods to collect health data and identify priorities, and consider the impact of social determinants of health on care delivery, as well as advancing equitable population health policies, advocacy strategies, and effective partnerships.
• Advance the scholarship of nursing by integrating best evidence into practice and demonstrating ethical conduct in all scholarly activities.
• Lead quality improvement and safety initiatives by incorporating national standards and guidelines, data-driven benchmarks, and risk mitigating strategies to enhance quality and promote a just and safe environment.
• Coordinate inter-professional activities by applying principles of team dynamics fostering mutual respect, utilizing effective communication strategies, personal expertise, and nursing’s unique knowledge to achieve optimal person and organizational outcomes.
• Create safe, cost-effective, equitable, and accessible care solutions for diverse populations across the continuum of care.
• Use best evidence and practice to select healthcare technologies and informatics tools to gather, analyze, and evaluate individual and population data, supporting decision-making to enhance care.
• Model ethical behavior in practice and leadership, integrating the values of professional nursing responsibility and accountability, integrity, collaboration, and advocacy for all persons.
• Demonstrate leadership and commitment to professional growth through self-reflection, continuous development, mentoring, and advocacy.

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Mary Gladwin Hall
209 Carroll Street
Akron, Ohio 44325-3701

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Preparing doctoral-level nursing leaders to advance and transform nursing through evidence-based practice, leading to improved patient outcomes.