Nurses w/ advanced education & patient outcomes

i am working on a project from work and would like some help from all. this particular question came about:
what does the research show are the benefits of having nurses with advanced educations in relation to patient outcomes? or what are the benefits of one having an advanced education? are their any particular resources that can guide me to the right direction? thanks ahead of time :-)
If you're referring to BSN vs ADN you can find many threads that address the research. Response #5 in this thread is pretty thorough:http://allnurses.com/registered-nurs...ve-132809.htmlAs a BSN I certainly wouldn't mind definitive proof that my money was well spent, although it doesn't appear that is necessarily the case. My state recently rescinded it's plan for "BSN in 10" citing a lack of evidence to support the costs of the mandate (Hospitals were concerned with the higher initial training costs associated with BSN's as well as tuition assistance). In the past, any disparity between 2 year and 4 year graduates in terms of bedside practice was thought to be largely due to the educational background and learning potential of the students rather than the programs themselves, which is less significant now that ADN program entry requirements are very similar to that of BSN programs given the heavy demand. The local ADN program in my area has had a minimum prerequisite GPA requirement of 3.8 since they started 5 years ago, and starting next year they will be requiring a previous Bachelors degree for entree, preferably a BS.

Like what's going on in your state. Better if the Bachelors requirement also required a GPA to be considered for entrance. Just sayin, 'cause I KA for both my degrees. I always hated it to hear educators say a "C" is passing with a big . Seriously? A "C" has always meant FAIL to my personal book.

C was a fail in my BSN program, even a C in a prereq disqualified you from the program. It wasn't easy to get into the program and it wasn't easy to stay in the program.A study in JAMA, http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/290/12/1617.short , found that:The proportion of hospital RNs holding a bachelor's degree or higher ranged from 0% to 77% across the hospitals. After adjusting for patient characteristics and hospital structural characteristics (size, teaching status, level of technology), as well as for nurse staffing, nurse experience, and whether the patient's surgeon was board certified, a 10% increase in the proportion of nurses holding a bachelor's degree was associated with a 5% decrease in both the likelihood of patients dying within 30 days of admission and the odds of failure to rescue (odds ratio, 0.95; 95% confidence interval, 0.91-0.99 in both cases). Other studies have shown that BSN wasn't as important as experience, but all the studies admit that there are limitations to their methodology. I've worked with excellent RNs with all degrees from a diploma to a masters and I've worked with some not so great RNs with the same degrees.

depends on what you call "advanced". Linda Aikens has plenty of published articles on the relationship of BSN nurses to lower mortality rates.

So many things im reading is saying a bsn degree equals lower mortality rates because the bsn programs go in dept more about cultural and social aspects. So what's the reasoning...im still trying to figure out. I feel as if us nurses learn more on the floor and being around doctors than sitting In a classroom. Im looking into going back to get my bsn myself but tell me how classes like english literature, history or art classes we have to take help better patients? And like when I was a student in school...are your patients going to ask you what kind of grades you received in school? No they care about how you care for them, your presentation and manner towards them. Any other thoughts about this topic? Too, Another nurse with a higher education than i can care for the same patient but im sure it boils down to how confident they feel about their nurses confidence.

Quote from rninwchA study in JAMA, http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/290/12/1617.short , found that:The proportion of hospital RNs holding a bachelor's degree or higher ranged from 0% to 77% across the hospitals. After adjusting for patient characteristics and hospital structural characteristics (size, teaching status, level of technology), as well as for nurse staffing, nurse experience, and whether the patient's surgeon was board certified, a 10% increase in the proportion of nurses holding a bachelor's degree was associated with a 5% decrease in both the likelihood of patients dying within 30 days of admission and the odds of failure to rescue (odds ratio, 0.95; 95% confidence interval, 0.91-0.99 in both cases).

Quote from MunoRNBoth of these references, as well as the one I referenced in the first response, are all the same study. There seems to be an impression out there that this a wealth of studies on the subject, when really there are only 3, 2 of them by Aikens. The main one is Aiken's more recent which was basically a re-do of her initial study.