NormanS

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

Some people are proposing degree only nurse training. I wonder how this would affect the numbers of students entering nurse training courses. Would the current nursing diploma students have stayed in school to do A levels before starting nursing degree courses..or chosen a different career? Would they still choose nursing when they have their A levels or would other degree options have become more attractive. Could this be the road to more nurse shortages? What do you think?