Last Updated: October 9, 2026
Program Overview
Mercy’s 12-month ABSN offers an in-person Des Moines route and regional Iowa cohorts combining online lectures with local in-person skills and clinical learning.
Mercy Health Sciences University, formerly Mercy College of Health Sciences, offers a full-time Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing across three semesters and six course modules.
The degree requires 120 credits: 65 prior general education credits, 52 nursing credits and the separate 3-credit Servant Leadership course. Applicants may qualify with the required prior credits or a non-nursing bachelor’s degree.
Des Moines offers fall, spring and summer entry with in-person instruction, skills labs and clinical rotations. Regional cohorts in Dubuque, Storm Lake, Iowa City and the Cedar Rapids area combine online lectures with in-person skills and clinical learning; their start dates are limited and vary by location.
Mercy has educated healthcare professionals since 1899 and is the only private Catholic university in central Iowa, with a faith-based, service-oriented mission.
Accreditation
Mercy’s baccalaureate nursing degree is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) and approved by the Iowa Board of Nursing. The university is institutionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.
The Iowa calendar-year 2025 report records an 88.10% first-time NCLEX-RN pass rate among 210 Mercy BSN candidates. This is a school-level BSN result, not an ABSN-only result; Mercy’s program page rounds its 2025 BSN first-time rate to 88%.
Mercy also reports 100% employment within one year among respondents to its 2024 graduate survey. Its 91.8% ABSN completion measure represents 45 of 49 students in the August 2024 cohort graduating within five semesters, or 150% of the expected timeframe.
Admission Requirements
Admission is a two-step process: first gain university admission, then meet the ABSN criteria. Prerequisites and the Core Curriculum may be completed at Mercy year-round; the 2026–27 catalog sets the requirements for new entrants.
- Prior completion of a minimum of 65 hours of college credit, or a completed baccalaureate degree in a non-nursing major
- An extracted GPA of 3.0 or higher (4.0 scale) from the prerequisite courses
- A grade of C (not C−) or higher in all prerequisite college-level courses
- Successful completion of all prerequisites before the program starts
- Complete all applicable Core Curriculum requirements except SVL 285 Servant Leadership before entry. A completed bachelor’s, Associate of Arts or Associate of Science degree meets the Core requirements except Servant Leadership; required nursing prerequisites still apply.
- Clinical compliance requirements met before beginning
Application deadlines (all materials, including transcripts, must be received by):
- Spring semester start: August 1
- Summer semester start: January 1
- Fall semester start: April 1
Early application is encouraged, and cohorts offered outside the Des Moines campus may have limited start dates per year.
Prerequisite Courses
Students complete 8 prerequisite courses with a C (not C−) or higher, achieving an extracted GPA of 3.0 or higher:
- Human Anatomy (with lab)
- Human Physiology (with lab)
- Microbiology (with lab)
- English Composition I
- General Psychology or Developmental Psychology
- College-level Math (3 credits)
- Statistics (lower or upper level, 3 credits)
- Nutrition (lower or upper level, 3 credits)
Curriculum
The 2026–27 ABSN plan for fall 2026 entrants and later requires 52 nursing credits across three semesters, each split into an eight-week and a seven-week module. Students progress from assessment, medication safety and nursing foundations to population and specialty care, then advanced care, leadership, preceptorship and NCLEX preparation.
The 120-credit degree includes 65 prior general education credits and a separate 3-credit Servant Leadership course. Students who began before fall 2026 follow their applicable earlier catalog.
Required Courses and Credits
Semester 1, Module A (8 weeks) — 9 Credits
| Course | Credits | What you study |
|---|---|---|
NUA 301 — Introduction to Safe Medication Administration | 1 | Builds basic medical terminology and abbreviations. Introduces the nursing process with a focus on assessment and safe medication administration. |
NUA 312 — Nursing Pathophysiology | 3 | Explains how disease changes body systems. Strengthens nursing decision-making for health promotion, risk reduction, and illness management. |
NUA 314 — Fundamentals of Nursing I | 5 | Introduces core nursing skills and basic physical assessment. Uses a holistic approach to history taking, screening, and safe skill performance in class, lab, and clinical. |
Semester 1, Module B (7 weeks) — 10 Credits
| Course | Credits | What you study |
|---|---|---|
NUA 303 — Nursing Pharmacology | 3 | Surveys common medications used to treat illness and support wellness. Emphasizes safe administration, monitoring, and patient response. |
NUA 321 — Health Promotion Across the Lifespan | 2 | Covers prevention and wellness strategies across age groups, with a strong focus on older adult health needs. |
NUA 324 — Fundamentals of Nursing II | 5 | Builds on Fundamentals I with more advanced, patient-centered skills. Expands clinical readiness through supervised lab and clinical practice. |
Semester 2, Module A (8 weeks) — 10 Credits
| Course | Credits | What you study |
|---|---|---|
NUA 364 — Person-Centered Care | 5 | Focuses on adult medical-surgical care for common conditions. Integrates prior learning with nutrition, health promotion, and medication therapy. |
NUA 374 — Concepts of Population Health | 3 | Introduces community health nursing and population-based care. Examines factors that shape health outcomes in groups and communities. |
NUA 424 — Mental Health Nursing | 2 | Applies evidence-based care for mental health conditions. Emphasizes therapeutic communication and ethical, legal, and cultural considerations. |
Semester 2, Module B (7 weeks) — 8 Credits
| Course | Credits | What you study |
|---|---|---|
NUA 404 — Maternal Child Nursing | 4 | Prepares students to care for childbearing families, infants, children, and adolescents. Focuses on prenatal care, prevention, and common acute and chronic conditions. |
NUA 414 — Person-Centered Care II | 4 | Advances adult medical-surgical nursing skills and clinical reasoning. Emphasizes safe, evidence-based interventions and effective care planning. |
Semester 3, Module A (8 weeks) — 7 Credits
| Course | Credits | What you study |
|---|---|---|
NUA 401 — Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice | 2 | Introduces research methods that support evidence-based nursing. Connects inquiry skills to quality improvement and clinical practice. |
NUA 444 — Person-Centered Care III | 4 | Further develops adult medical-surgical care for common health problems. Reinforces integrated care using nutrition, health promotion, and medication management. |
NUA 448 — Capstone I | 1 | Prepares students for licensure testing and clinical judgment. Uses NCLEX-style practice, review, and test-taking strategies. |
Semester 3, Module B (7 weeks) — 8 Credits
| Course | Credits | What you study |
|---|---|---|
NUA 456 — Role of the Nurse Leader | 3 | Develops leadership and management skills for varied care settings. Covers policy, finance, informatics, and regulation that shape nursing practice. |
NUA 464 — Nursing Preceptorship | 3 | Provides focused clinical hours with guided role transition. Strengthens real-world practice through supervised patient care. The catalog specifies 135 clinical hours with a nurse preceptor. |
NUA 478 — Capstone II | 2 | Builds on Capstone I with deeper NCLEX preparation, adding intensive review, more practice questions, and targeted performance feedback. |
Separate Core Requirement
| Course | Credits | What you study |
|---|---|---|
SVL 285 — Servant Leadership | 3 | Service, leadership and reflection grounded in Mercy’s mission; may be completed at any point in the program, rather than in an assigned nursing module. |
Capstone I and II focus on NCLEX preparation and clinical judgment. The separate Nursing Preceptorship provides supervised patient care and professional role transition; it is not a scholarly capstone project.
Clinical Experience
Clinical experiences are integrated throughout the curriculum, beginning with the Fundamentals of Nursing courses and continuing through the Person-Centered Care rotations, Mental Health Nursing, and Maternal Child Nursing, culminating in the Nursing Preceptorship.
Des Moines students complete in-person skills labs and clinicals with healthcare partners, while regional cohort students (Dubuque, Storm Lake, Iowa City, and Cedar Rapids areas) complete in-person skills labs and clinical rotations with local healthcare partners while attending online lectures.
To graduate, students must pass required courses and clinical skill competencies, complete the BSN reflective essay and complete the required NCLEX predictive examinations and associated remediation. NUA 464 Nursing Preceptorship includes 135 clinical hours; this is the final course’s requirement, not the entire program’s clinical-hour total.
Tuition and Costs
Estimated tuition at 2026–27 rates: $44,430 for 55 required Mercy credits. The published schedule charges $810 per ABSN credit, making the 52-credit nursing major $42,120. The catalog identifies that nursing rate with NUA courses; applying the $770 general undergraduate rate to the separate 3-credit SVL 285 course adds $2,310.
This estimate includes the required Servant Leadership course, which is not waived by a previous degree, and excludes prerequisite tuition and fees. Billing depends on the courses taken and applicable term rates; a sequence extending beyond the published rate year may cost more.
Required fees are additional. The ABSN material fee is $1,378 per assessment, charged in semester 1/module A and semester 2/module A, for $2,756 across those assessments. The graduation fee is $110 and the university application fee is $25.
Budget separately for books, supplies, clinical compliance and third-party screening charges, travel and living expenses. Prior bachelor’s, A.A. and A.S. degrees meet Core requirements except Servant Leadership, but applicants still need the prescribed nursing prerequisites.
Related Programs
Beyond the ABSN, Mercy offers a Traditional BSN, an RN-to-BSN (published 2026–27 tuition: $436 per credit), and 3+1 partnerships with Buena Vista University, Central College, Faith Baptist Bible College, Loras College and Simpson College. The partnerships combine a Mercy BSN with a bachelor’s degree from the partner institution over four years.