Re: Entry into Practice: Diploma Programs for Registered Nursing
I am sorry if you felt insulted by my post, I did not mean to denigrate diploma school graduates and if I did so I apologize. I merely meant to say that I do not think that nursing practice suffers because we do not graduate with the clinical experience that diploma schools graduates were afforded. I also did not mean to imply that diploma school graduates are the lesser in any way or that they do not continue their education as may all nursing graduates. I certainly don't want to play which of us makes the better nurse, there are benefits and shortfalls to most programs and I do think that hospitals can spend more time and money orienting nurses to the scope and tools of practice in that setting. In most schools we learn about the tools of the medical trade, which has changed time and time again over the last 100 years and what we utilize now will again change in the next 100 years. In my obviously inept way, I am suggesting that the basics of nursing education include much more than the much sought after readiness to work in a hospital setting and certainly don't mean to suggest that diploma school graduates have not learned more than how to run machinery. So many nurses leave university based schools feeling less than because they have not done such or such a procedure or mastered such and such a machine...I sometimes fear that they do not understand that these are tools of the trade and not the heart and soul of nursing practice that I believe has more to do with helping people through illness and life events using whatever tools are preferred and available.
Sorry if I have offended you...truly. This conversation about entry-level into nursing education divides us more than helping us to understand who we are. I have worked on the floor with Master's level, BSN level, Diploma level graduates all on the same night and it can turn out that the best nurse on the floor is the Nurses Aide...because he/she has the heart and soul and a calling to providing comfort and care...and that could be any one of us.
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