Are we educating nurses for the bed side or educating them to leave it?

Here's a question I've been thinking about:

If we encourage nurses to earn BSN, MSN, DNP, MBA, and doctoral degrees, why are so many of those career paths designed to lead them away from direct patient care?

We tell nurses to continue learning, develop leadership skills, understand research, improve systems, and influence healthcare. Then we often measure career advancement by how far they move from the bedside.

Is that what we intended?

Or should healthcare create more opportunities for highly educated nurses to remain in clinical practice while using their expanded knowledge to improve patient care, mentor colleagues, and strengthen healthcare delivery?

This isn't a criticism of advanced education. Quite the opposite.

It's a question about whether we've aligned nursing education with nursing careers.

I'd be interested to hear what nurses, educators, students, and healthcare leaders think.