Students earning health and medicine degrees to become registered nurses may take part in an evolving curriculum as schools adapt to meet the challenges of the current health industry. For instance, a Florida university now will offer an updated school of nursing philosophy, and students will have to meet higher performance standards.

The school will offer 10 new courses - such as evidence-based nursing and professional nursing - presented entirely online with multimedia voice-based lectures. Students also will take classes to learn how to operate computers, monitors and data-gathering devices.

All new content is based on guidelines published by the American Association of Colleges and Nursing's "The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice." Other new courses will touch on quality improvement, patient care, genetics, cultural sensitivity, clinical reasoning and professionalism.

Changes in nursing education come as the industry is growing, creating a need for more professionals. In 2003, 12 percent of the U.S. population was older than 65, expected to increase to 20 percent by 2030, according to AACN. People older than 65 had nearly four times the number of hospitalization days than those younger than 65.