The BSN curriculum is designed to prepare nurse generalists by providing a foundation for graduate study. To these ends, the curriculum focuses upon those nursing roles and functions not ordinarily emphasized in lower division nursing programs. These include health promotion, community health nursing, nursing research, and nursing leadership. Courses leading to the BSN are available at the main campus in New Orleans and through the Distance Learning Program in Baton Rouge at Baton Rouge General School of Nursing and a number of distance learning sites in Louisiana. Courses needed for the BSN degree may be taken in various ways. Students may take a combination of nursing and non-nursing courses at any point in the degree completion process. Students are  not required to complete all core and adjunct courses prior to taking nursing courses.

A minimum of 120 credit hours is required for the BSN degree. This includes 50 credit hours of nursing (24 hours of lower division nursing and 26 hours of upper division nursing), 42 credit hours of required core/adjunct courses, and 28 credit hours of core/adjunct electives. No lower division nursing courses are taught at Loyola. Graduates of accredited A.D.N. and diploma nursing programs receive 24 transfer or advanced placement credits for lower division nursing courses.

Two of the Loyola nursing courses have laboratory / practicum components. NURS 365: Health Assessment has 1 credit hour devoted to clinical laboratory time. One credit hour of laboratory is equivalent to 30 clock hours of supervised and unsupervised practice learning for the semester.

NURS 473: Comprehensive Integrated Practicum is a 4 credit hour practicum course. This course requires 180 clock hours of community-based practicum activities. See the nursing course rotation schedule and the full BSN curriculum and in Table 1.1 and Table 1.2 which follow the next paragraph below.