NP now need DNP

[tmwilliams84]

My issue is that nursing practice have come so far to go back. I feel that often we do not have enough leaders to speak up against lobbyist in regards to what goes on in "Our pratice." We have more of the traditional nurses, head bobbing like everything is peaches and pie. The reality is that doctors feel we need to have a DNP to prescribe medications for those of us advancing or is NP. Really, residents don't even know anything when they get out of school. Everything they learn is during their residency, yet some resident can pda a med just to give my patient some morphine or how about when I suggest to them what to prescribe. My issues is this we need to further our education not in terms of AMA lobbyists, but for us to be in control. If we had just as many nurses supporting us this will not take place. I don't think its fair for us to have to do something to satify the doctors just so that we can stay beneath them and not grow as our own profession. Once again we are moving backwards and not forward. Yes, I encourage all nurses interested in DNP to get it just not in terms of some political bullying! Tell me what you think.

[elkpark]

How informed are you about this subject?? I ask because you suggest that the push for the DNP for advanced practice is coming from the medical (physician) community, which is certainly not the case -- that idea was invented by nursing academics. Physicians had nothing to do with it, and many of them think it's a terrible idea.

[tmwilliams84]

Thank you, my understanding that physicians felt it was not right for RNs to precribe medications and not have a doctorate. Maybe I am not well informed, but nursing is changing. I look forward to see the outcome, Is it because we don't have enough nursing leaders or is it more of a professional advancement demands on nursing? You tell me, we are also short in academia as well.

[elkpark]

I'm curious -- where did your "understanding" of this come from? Some physicians (a minority of the physician community, as far as I know) feel that no nurses should be prescribing medications, period, whatever their academic preparation. Most physicians have been working happily with MSN-prepared advanced practice nurses for decades now without any problems or complaints. The push for doctoral-level education for advanced practice nurses has come entirely from nursing academia (a small minority within that community).

There are quite a few existing threads here about the DNP-for-advanced-practice controversy -- I encourage you to review some of them if you want to read what has already been discussed on this site.

[Catch22Personified]

A lot of the discussion about the DNP issue is the curriculum. Even some DNP students feel that its a lot of fluff and not enough actual clinical issues. It feels highly politicized.