C790 Foundations in Nursing Informatics, catalog number NURS 5745, is the two-CU opening course of the MSN Nursing Informatics specialty, taken in both informatics tracks. It covers informatics theory, practice and applications, with clinical documentation, communication and technology used to support nursing practice. The word to notice is documentation. Most of the scoring in this course rests on whether you can analyse what a nurse writes down, why the system asks for it, and what it costs to collect.
What NURS 5745 is actually testing
Clinical documentation is the largest single block of non-clinical work in a nurse's day, and almost nobody has ever analysed it. This course asks you to. Every field in an assessment form exists because somebody wanted the data: a clinician, a regulator, a billing process, a quality programme, a legal department. Those constituencies rarely coordinate, which is how a form arrives with four questions that answer the same clinical question in different words.
The scored skill is tracing a documentation requirement to its origin and then judging whether the data is worth the time it takes to capture. A nurse spending 90 seconds per shift on a field nobody reads is spending real hours across a year, and informatics exists partly to find those.
The second theme is standardised nursing language, which surprises students who expected technology. Nursing has developed terminologies precisely so that what a nurse does can be recorded in a form that aggregates. Without a shared vocabulary, nursing work is invisible in the data that drives budgets and staffing. Graduate work in this course is expected to know that such terminologies exist, why they were developed, and what is lost when free text replaces them.
The third is technology in support of practice rather than as an end. A tool that produces perfect data and adds two minutes to every medication pass has not supported practice. Papers that describe technology without weighing burden read as promotional rather than analytical.
Turning scored aspects into a section plan
WGU keeps rubric detail in your Course of Study rather than in the catalog, so count the scored aspects before writing. Each is judged independently on a three-point scale and each needs a 2, so a strong technology section will not carry a thin documentation section.
The word budget, worked. Suppose four scored aspects and directions asking for about 1,400 words. Reserve 110 for an opening naming the documentation process you are analysing, and 90 for a close, leaving 1,200 across four aspects, or 300 each. Then adjust. The analysis aspect deserves 380, since it has to carry origin, purpose, burden and value for a specific documentation element. Take about 27 words from each of the other three and the arithmetic holds.
Choose a single documentation process and name it in the first paragraph. Admission assessment, shift handover, wound documentation, restraint monitoring, discharge instructions. One process traced properly beats a survey of the electronic record in every aspect.
A structure that fits a foundations informatics paper
Where directions specify headings, follow theirs. Where they do not, this arrangement keeps the analysis anchored to a real process.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Process selected | The documentation activity, who performs it, how often, in what setting | A frequency and a duration, because burden cannot be assessed without them |
| Data captured | The specific fields, their types and whether they are structured or free text | Field-level detail rather than a description of the form |
| Origin of the requirement | Clinical, regulatory, billing, quality or legal driver for each element | Each requirement traced to a source rather than assumed |
| Terminology | Whether a standardised nursing language is used and what follows from that | Named terminologies with their maintaining organisations |
| Downstream use | Who reads the data, in what report, to make what decision | A named consumer; fields with no consumer are the finding |
| Burden analysis | Time per entry, entries per shift, staff affected, annual total | Arithmetic shown, since a computed figure is the strongest evidence here |
| Recommendation | What to remove, restructure or automate, and what improves | A specific change with an owner and an expected effect |
| References | APA list of informatics literature, terminology sources and any regulation | Terminologies and regulations cited to their issuing bodies |
Where you propose removing a field, say who would object and why. Every documentation element has a constituency, and a recommendation that has not identified its opponent has not been thought through.
Evidence craft when the evidence is documentation
Informatics claims can be checked, which makes precise sourcing worth the effort.
- Cite standardised nursing terminologies to the organisations that maintain them, and give a version where one exists.
- Distinguish regulatory requirements from organisational habit. A great deal of documentation exists because someone once thought it was required, and the difference is worth checking before you claim it.
- Support documentation burden claims with published time and motion research as well as your own estimate. Your figure gains credibility when it sits near a published one.
- Do not cite vendor material for an effect. It can describe a feature and cannot establish that the feature improved anything.
- Keep organisational forms out of the submission unless the directions allow it and identifying detail is removed. Describe the fields instead.
- Quote sparingly. Terminology definitions are heavily reproduced, and WGU runs submissions through a similarity check.
A second discipline is worth adopting early in this specialty: read the form as a document with authors. Ask which parts were written by clinicians, which by a compliance office, which by a vendor's default template and which have survived from a paper chart nobody has revisited in a decade. Documentation accumulates in layers the way a building does, and the layer a field belongs to usually predicts how hard it will be to remove. That reading is what turns a description of a form into an analysis of a system, and it is available to anyone willing to ask where each requirement came from.
The habit that lifts a paper here is doing the annual arithmetic out loud. Ninety seconds, twice a shift, across twenty nurses, over a year, is a number in the hundreds of hours. Writing that calculation out converts a general complaint about documentation into an argument a nurse executive would act on, and it is exactly the kind of reasoning the informatics specialty is training you for.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects score independently, and the burden and downstream use sections are where thin submissions show.
- One documentation process is analysed at field level rather than described.
- Every requirement is traced to a named driver.
- At least one standardised terminology is named with its maintaining organisation.
- Burden is quantified with the arithmetic shown.
- The recommendation names an owner and an expected effect.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs time rather than standing. Terms run six months at a flat rate, so closing more courses per term lowers the effective cost of each. C790 is the gateway to the informatics specialty and the later system design course builds directly on it, so a delay here tends to be paid for twice.
Five mistakes that cost time in C790
- Writing about the electronic record in general. Too large to analyse. Choose one process and go to field level.
- Assuming every requirement is regulatory. A lot of documentation is local habit, and checking is part of the analysis.
- Ignoring standardised nursing language. It is a foundational topic in this specialty and a predictable scored aspect.
- Describing burden without counting it. Time consuming is an adjective. Hours per year is evidence.
- Recommending more documentation. Occasionally correct and usually the wrong instinct in a course about supporting practice.
How support works on this course
C790 sets the analytical pattern for the whole informatics specialty, so it is worth doing properly rather than quickly. Send the rubric out of your Course of Study with the task directions, and the first move is choosing the documentation process, since a well-chosen one makes every aspect straightforward. From there you get a field-level analysis, each requirement traced to a driver, terminologies located and cited to their maintainers, the burden arithmetic worked out, and a recommendation with an owner and an identified opponent.
The boundaries are fixed. Objective assessments at WGU are proctored, so we prepare only, never sit them, and never ask for portal credentials. On the field experience later in this specialty we never complete practice hours, contact mentors or sites, sign placement paperwork or fill in hour logs.
Questions students ask about C790
Is C790 the same course as NURS 5745?
How is C790 different from D029?
Do I need an informatics job to take this specialty?
Starting the informatics specialty with C790?
Send your Course of Study rubric and the task directions. We choose the documentation process, take it to field level and work the burden arithmetic.
Where C790 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 2 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.