Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation
"Nursing Education Must Be Remade"
In the first national study of nursing education in thirty years, a recently released report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching calls for sweeping changes in nursing education programs in order to remedy a severe shortage of nurses and to stop producing nursing undergraduates who are poorly prepared to deal with profound changes in science, technology, and the nature of their work.
In a book based on that study as well as the results of three national surveys and extended site visits, the authors of Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation
Based upon the results of the Carnegie study as well as additional national surveys, one of the most sweeping recommendations is that all entry level registered nurses should be prepared at the baccalaureate level (BSN), and all RNs should be required to earn a master’s degree (MSN) within 10 years of initial licensure.
Beverly Malone, chief executive officer, National League for Nursing said, "This book represents a call to arms, a call for nursing educators and programs to step up in our preparation of nurses. This book will incite controversy, wonderful debate, and dialogue among nurses and others. It is a must-read for every nurse educator and for every nurse that yearns for nursing to acknowledge and reach for the real difference that nursing can make in safety and quality in health care."
“We believe that the enormous pressures on today’s nursing profession—the chaotic U.S. health care system and the economic forces that drive it, shortage in the ranks of nurses, shortage of nursing educators, multiple pathways to the profession that discourage rather than encourage practicing nurses to complete post licensure degrees—threaten to compromise nurses’ ability to practice state-of-the-art nursing and enact the profession’s core values of care and responsibility,” the authors write.
The authors found that many of today’s new nurses are “undereducated” to meet practice demands across settings. Their strong support for high quality BSN degree programs as the appropriate pathway for RNs entering the profession is consistent with the views of many leading nursing organizations, including the American Nurses Association, the American Organization of Nurse Executives, and AACN.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) not only supports this recommendation, but "stands ready to help move this agenda forward", according to AACN President Fay Raines, who went on to say, “Moving to create a more highly educated nursing workforce is in the best interest of the patients we serve.”
Quality patient care hinges on having a well-educated nursing workforce. A growing body of research clearly shows that lower patient mortality rates, fewer medication errors, and positive care outcomes are all linked to nurses prepared at the baccalaureate and graduate degree levels.
Other Key Recommendations Include
1. Require the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) for entry to practice.
2. That pre-nursing students should be introduced to nursing early in their education by requiring students to take prerequisites for clinical courses during the first two years of college.
3. That nursing school coursework be tied to what actually happens in patient care rather than in the abstract, helping students make the connection between acquiring and using knowledge, integrating the classroom with clinical practice.
4. That nurses are prepared for the myriad contexts in which they will work, not merely a hospital setting by increasing the variety of clinical settings in which nursing students are educated.
5. That the associate of nursing degree from community colleges be re-evaluated in light of the extended amount of time most student nurses spend in completing these nursing programs.
6. Requiring a one-year clinical residency for all new nursing graduates.
7. That all master's and doctoral level nursing programs should include teacher education programs in order to better prepare future members of the faculties of nursing schools.
A study published in the July/August 2003 issue of Nursing Outlook, found that nurses prepared at the BSN level were found to have higher levels of job satisfaction than lesser educated nurses. A survey released by Nursing2005 magazine in October 2005, found BSN nurses earn salaries more than 10 percent higher than ADN nurses. Higher salaries for baccalaureate-prepared nurses have also been recorded in surveys conducted by RN magazine and HRSA's National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses.
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