ASN BSN NP MD Equality?

[AAC.271]

"Studies at the University of Pennsylvania showing that nurses with higher degrees produce better patient outcomes have fueled demand for bachelor's degrees. "The evidence base is growing, and a number of hospitals are acting on it," said Linda Aiken, director of the Center for Health Outcomes Research at Penn's nursing school. One of her studies, for example, showed that every 10-percentage-point increase in the proportion of nurses with a bachelor's degree in a hospital is associated with a 5 percent decline in patient mortality."

As many of you know, i'm very passionate about the whole education issue. What I don't get is the research. How in the world are ASN nurses inferior to BSN nurses? Literally, we all take the same exam and we all receive on the job training and experience.

How is it that they are able to show that education has no impact on one's ability to be a good provider between an NP and MD or a PA and MD, yet they somehow show that an ASN is inferior to a BSN? This befuddles me....

[llg, PhD, RN]

How is it that they are able to show that education has no impact on one's ability to be a good provider between an NP and MD or a PA and MD, yet they somehow show that an ASN is inferior to a BSN? This befuddles me....

Actually, no one claims that NP's and PA's are equal to MD's in overall practice that includes all aspects of care. It's just that studies have shown that NP's and PA's can do an equal or better job than MD's in certain specific aspects of care.

Clarifying that in your head may be the first step in become un-befuddled. After you have grasped the reality of the NP/PA/MD research studies ... then you can start to look at the ADN/BSN studies. I suggest you start that exploration by identifying the variables that were measured in those studies -- in other words, which aspects of care were measured and compared. How were they measured, etc. When you do that, you'll see once again that not every aspect of care was studied, only certain ones. Nobody claims that BSN's beat ADN's on every aspect of care -- only certain ones.