The education requirement for nursing is changing

2 It used to be that nurses did not have to go to college; we were instead trained by hospitals. Then the education requirement changed and community college replaced hospitals. And now, it is changing to that some hospitals will only hire nurses with college degrees. Undoubtedly, the education requirement will continue to increase in the future.

The downside to this is that it will make this profession harder to get into. And those who are in the profession will constantly need to adapt by going back to school. The upside to this is that it will provide us with more skills to do a better job.

What is your opinion on this? Last edit by DichloroacetateAl on Aug 26, '12
The educational changes are related to the idea of professionalizing nursing. This is a good thing.

My opinion is that it isn't accurate. To say that nurses didn't used to have to go to college because they were "trained" by hospitals is more-or-less technically correct, but it doesn't really capture the essence of earlier nursing education. The education provided by a reputable hospital school of nursing WAS a college education. Nurses have also been receiving bachelor's degrees for a good long time--long before community colleges started granting associate's degrees in nursing.

This is the trend in many professions. Colleges are the gatekeepers for more professions. Once a college degree was an unusually hight level of achievment, now it is more standard. The downside is that college is getting more expensive and doesn't give you the career boost that it once did. The degree has little to do with actual skills; it is a credential.

BSN degrees predate Associate Degrees, don't they?

I think anything that raises the bar for nurses, builds us up as a more professional career (rather than a "pink collar" trade), gains us more respect and gives us more bargaining power for higher salaries, while also forcing more selectivity in who joins the profession, can only be a GOOD thing in the long run.

I am all for it.

Homework?

No, it's not homework. I made this thread after reading the following article from the New York Times:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/ed...AmWwWJyq74Jipw

I'm all for making nursing hard to get into, because it lessens the competition for existing nurses and keeps salaries from going on. The glut of new grads and pop-up nursing schools is something that needs to be stopped.

I read the article you linked but I think the education requirement many hospitals are imposing and the new rules for degree attainment (ex: you will need a doctorate to get NP after , um 2014?, I think) down play the importance of experience on the job, the individual RN and the facilities that he/she have worked at. There are several RN's on the floor where I work that have ADN degrees and are smarter than many of our residents and truly know how to care for our patients. Then there are some BSN 's who do not have the same experience and practical knowledge needed for floor work and it takes them years to catch up and gain that experience. I think that the distinction is weird and the seperation is crazy as whether you are ADN, diploma or BSN, we ALL take the same NCLEX if you are a registered nurse and a new grad is a new grad-its what you do with your time working is what makes you the nurse you are-not your education background that allowed you to take NCLEX.

Yes they do; the BSN was first established in the early 1900s at Minnesota. I'm always confused when people seem to think the BSN is a new concept... the ADN didn't come into existence until the 1950s.

ADNs were introduced as an effort to increase the Nursing educational pipeline during WWII and they quickly became very popular.Despite popular opinion, nursing is a "knowledge-based" profession. Sure, we do a lot of patient-touching, but the essence of Professional Nursing is the ability to analyze and make decisions based upon our knowledge of what is going on and what needs to be done. Unfortunately, current nursing jobs do not really differentiate by skill levels (due to a huge number of factors) so RNs are spending a lot of time doing tasks that 'someone needs to do' rather than limiting the work to RN-specific areas of practice. Let's face it, basic hygiene, endless documentation, road trips to pharmacy & central supply, filling out PI forms, . . . etc. could all be either automated or done by other types of staff. It's just cheaper at this point to use RNs. This may change if RNs become too expensive.Like all other knowledge-based professions, basic educational requirements for nursing is increasing as the practice environment becomes more sophisticated. For example, years ago, a reasonably intelligent person could become a database administrator simply by paying attention to on-the-job training... These days? Employers require graduate degrees. So, why would nursing be any different?