Bridging Policy-Curriculum-Accommodations: A Nursing Education Initiative

Supporting student academic accommodations (AAs) is an increasingly prevalent challenge for post-secondary nursing instructors in Ontario, with the growing number of students in nursing programs with mental health or medical disabilities. Historically, nursing programs have denied access to potential students with disabilities; today, the rigorous nursing program structure and the lack of support for instructors remain realities, even with the Ontario Human Rights Code and administrators' policies. The nursing faculty team (NFT) at Top College (TC) (pseudonym) must uphold educational and clinical expectations while assuring student competencies and curriculum integrity. In this comprehensive dissertation-in-practice (DiP), I explore bridging gaps in policy, curriculum, and the growing complexity of AAs. This proposed initiative combines a universal design for learning (UDL) framework with a nursing solution (NS) (UDL-NS), which includes the creation of a nursing accommodation-accessibility decision tree tool. This DiP combines Shields's transformative, Heifetz's adaptive, and Ubuntu's socio-ethical leadership approaches to change. The implementation plan is guided by Deszca and Ingols' change path model (CPM), a communication plan with the alignment, voice, identification, and dialogue (AVID) framework, and a plan, do, study, act (PDSA) monitoring and evaluation plan. A knowledge mobilization plan further illustrates change implementation. The successful implementation will provide a systemic infrastructure for TC and, potentially, other nursing education programs.\nKeywords: mental health, nursing, competencies, accommodation, universal design for learning, disability