Validating graduate student programmatic outcomes.

One area of paramount importance for a school of nursing's accreditation process is the evaluation of competencies and/or outcomes for the program. Each course within a program is expected to bring the students to the point of comprehending the selected programmatic outcomes while determining an improvement in the mastery of the designated competencies. Schools of nursing have used capstone courses to provide an avenue for the documentation of the synthesis and acquisition of material addressed by programmatic outcomes.This article provides a discussion of one such capstone endeavor used within a university setting, where the school of nursing elected to conduct a non-thesis-requiring program. The capstone experience employed for this program allows for synthesis of concepts, self-reflection, personal assessment, and striving for completeness.