Degree nurses only??

karenG · Oct 20, 2004

they've been talking about degree only nurses for years! But it looks at though it is going to happen. I think someone said on another thread that HCA's are being trained to become the equivalent of the old SEN! which is a fair comment. I can see the arguement for degre only registered nurses.. all about recognition as a profession etc. But to be honest.... just pay us what we are worth!!

Karen

uk_nurse · Oct 20, 2004

[quote name=karenG But to be honest.... just pay us what we are worth!!

Karen[/quote]

Well said karenG. i totally agree with what you said :)

StuPer · Oct 22, 2004

Hi NormanS

I'm an ex-pat brit living & working in Oz, here all nurses are trained at degree level and there are no specialties, you have to do post registration training to be able to specialise in say mental health. This also means that upon qualifying you can work anywhere...

The process here has not improved the professional standing of nurse in the eyes of other professions, the doctors can still be arrogant and overbearing. On the serious downside, there is a chronic shortage of nurses (no different form the UK), but new grads can only be brought into training if they have the academic qualifications to get a degree, which cuts out a large number of potentials.

I sometimes think in this race for professional recognition we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Recognition is about far more than having our own body of professional knowledge, its about mutual respect for what we all do, and many nurses have little respect for their own colleagues let alone other professionals.

The other thing about having degree only nurses is that if it is decided to return to diploma level at a later date there will be massive resistance from the universities and various 'professors of nursing' as they will lose a lucrative ammount of income. The more we raise the benchmark for our profession, the more potential nurses we leave behind, and the harder our own work becomes.

To be honest the only people I'm interested in viewing me as a professional are my nursing colleagues and the patients I work with... I already have that and I'm happy.

regards StuPer

NormanS · Oct 22, 2004

Hi StuPer,

Thanks for your reply and for your views. Your comments seem to confirm my view that raising the entry standard (and age) to university entry level is the main reason for the current nursing shortages around the world. In Poland the entry level was raised to age 19 with university entrance qualifications in 1996. New nurse registrations have fallen from 10,000 a year then to about 1,000 a year now. In ten years from now we will have about half the nurses we need.

As you say it will be hard to change back to a Diploma system when it is the academic nurses from the universities who set national and international policy as government advisers and ICN / PCN leaders.

The recent Kings College research says that Diploma nurses and Degree nurses are of equal standard in terms of fitness to practice. The only difference seems to be that degree nurses are more ambitious and more likely to move out of general nursing. If this is true then why consider Degree only nursing courses. Don't people realise that this will only lead to more shortages...and more work for those who are left!

Best Regards,

NormanS

QUOTE=StuPer]Hi NormanS

I'm an ex-pat brit living & working in Oz, here all nurses are trained at degree level and there are no specialties, you have to do post registration training to be able to specialise in say mental health. This also means that upon qualifying you can work anywhere...

The process here has not improved the professional standing of nurse in the eyes of other professions, the doctors can still be arrogant and overbearing. On the serious downside, there is a chronic shortage of nurses (no different form the UK), but new grads can only be brought into training if they have the academic qualifications to get a degree, which cuts out a large number of potentials.

I sometimes think in this race for professional recognition we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Recognition is about far more than having our own body of professional knowledge, its about mutual respect for what we all do, and many nurses have little respect for their own colleagues let alone other professionals.

The other thing about having degree only nurses is that if it is decided to return to diploma level at a later date there will be massive resistance from the universities and various 'professors of nursing' as they will lose a lucrative ammount of income. The more we raise the benchmark for our profession, the more potential nurses we leave behind, and the harder our own work becomes.

To be honest the only people I'm interested in viewing me as a professional are my nursing colleagues and the patients I work with... I already have that and I'm happy.

regards StuPer

purplemania, BSN, RN · Oct 22, 2004

Good idea, but hard to accomplish unless we change how people work. I got my associates degree first so I could go to work right away and earn a living. Then I got my BSN in order to advance my career. But I would not have gone for the BSN in the beginning as I needed to make money sooner than that and did not have anyone helping with tuition.

karenG · Oct 22, 2004

Interesting points...

sometimes I think we lose sight of the important thing.. the patient. I did my degree late and yes I trained the old fashioned way.. back in the dim distant past when we did stuff like back rounds and obs rounds.. we even made the beds (used to have bed making competions!) and cleaned!! while I dont think my training was perfect.. and there was very little academic stuff as I recall!! I did get a very good training, I learnt a great deal about communication skills and actually delivering care. AN NP friend agues that the back round is a very efficient way of actually communicating with patients and finding out what is going on, as well as preventing pressure areas! ( and I am saddened to say that I am seeing patients discharged with pressure sores- something I would have been stung up for when I trained)

Maybe we need to get a balance. as a student nurse I remember hating degree nurses because they knew a lot of theory but had absolutely no common sense( one asked why we all jumped into action when someone shouted crash!) I have to say that the some of the students we are host to in the practice seem to have no common sense and I would not want them within 100' of a patient. They often dont want to get their hands dirty and I gather the drop out rate is high. Maybe we need to rethink nurse training and what we want at the end of it. Yes, I am a highly skilled nurse practitioner but its taken a lot of training to get here! I knew from my first ward placement exactly what nursing was about. Being on a terminal care ward at 19 (my first ward) was a big shock to the system but I knew what I was letting myself in for after that!! I have heard talk of a training that is more practically based.

I dont have any answers.. just questions! But if pay is related to education then we need the education.. but in nursing thats not the case! Maybe agenda for change will change that, maybe I will get paid for the work I do. I will wait and see.

Karen

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Oct 22, 2004

Several provinces in Canada have gone to a degree as entry to practice, and have found to their utter astonishment that they're really short of nurses now. So much has been made of the working conditions nurses live with and the lack of autonomy and respect that many young people, faced with a four-year program, are choosing other areas where they won't have to work every other weekend, statutory holidays, nights and their birthday every year for less money than a drywall hanger makes. In Manitoba, BSN as entry to practice was made law effective January 2000, meaning no diploma nurses were accepted into training after January 1997, and all the diploma schools were dissolved. By 2000, the nursing shortage in that province was becoming a serious problem and the new provincial government, in collaboration with the health regions and the nurses' union, decided to reopen the diploma program through the provincial community college system. The first intake was in August 2001. The waiting list for the program sits at several hundred. Meanwhile the BSN program at the universities has raised their entry requirements so significantly that they hardly accept anyone. There was of course the expected hue and cry from the university faculty and numerous media reports of the dumbing-down of nursing. The provincial regulatory board, who were required to approve the curriculum of the diploma program when it regrouped, made many of the derogatory comments about diploma training, quite intentionally insulting those of us who are diploma-trained by suggesting that we are somehow inferior to university trained nurses, even though we all wrote and passed the identical licensing exams. But let's not reopen the diploma-vs-degree can of worms. That's been hashed and rehashed enough. Suffice to say, degree as entry to practice will be tried, and in some places it will fall short of the mark.

Fiona59 · Oct 22, 2004

Alberta and BC have gone the BScN route. Upto two year wait list to train as an RN.

The LPN-RN bridge arrived but won't bring too many experienced LPN's over. We have to make the same admission marks as the fresh out of high school kids.

Would you want to go back and redo your grade 11 and 12 to be place on an 18-24 month wait list, while continuing to work to retain your licence which is a requirement for the bridge programme.

I think that more importance has to be attached to the licensing exams than to the degree.

fergus51 · Oct 23, 2004

There was a 2 year waitlist before BSN became the minimum in BC. The waitlists are caused by more people choosing nursing thanks to the shortage. This isn't the cause of the shortage. All that changed was that nurses have to do 2 more semestres than they did before. I think it's a good thing and don't understand why nurses are so resistant to it. We have a real shortage of family doctors but no one ever suggests shortening their training to solve the problem. The problem isn't 2 extra semestres of school, it's crap jobs when they get out. I say this as one of the many nurses that left the province since Gordon Campbell took office.

Fiona59 · Oct 23, 2004

I remember when VGH had a nursing school, Langara trained RN's and UBC did BScN.

RN was a two year course, BScN is a four year course. How do you figure its only an extra two semesters?

fergus51 · Oct 23, 2004

The Diploma programs were 3 years and the BSN was 4, so it was 2 more semestres. The programs that ran 2 years generally went through both summers meaning they were 3 year programs compressed into 2 years (both were 6 semestres long). My four year program was done in 3 thanks to this as well (8 semestres).

UBC still is running a 2 year RN program for students that have a degree in another field and the regular 4 year BSN program. I don't know when VGH stopped training nurses, but I thought it was a long time ago? Langara will be offering the degree starting September 2006. They are a part of the same collaborative program I went through involving several universities and colleges in BC.

http://www.langara.bc.ca/programs/NURS.html

http://www.nursing.ubc.ca/program/start11.html

Being forced to do the BSN is a pain in the butt for new nurses, but it certainly isn't the cause of the shortage. If we kept every diploma program running and cranked out new nurses and they all stayed in BC we would still need to recruit from outside of BC to meet our demand.