What do optometrists, physicians, osteopaths, audiologists, physical therapists, pharmacists, speech pathologists and chiropractors have in common?

They all have achieved consensus about a minimal educational standard for entry into practice.¹

The educational pathway of the registered nurse has been branched for many years, offering hospital-based diploma programs, associate degree programs, and baccalaureate programs. This has contributed to "educational inconsistency and confusion for prospective students, healthcare consumers, employers, and the profession itself."²

Because there are multiple pathways to the RN degree there has been an overall weakening of the collective empowerment of nurses, while the debate about the best route to take has long been seen as fueling a civil war among the ranks of the differently trained nurses.

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Healthcare demands are on the rise; nursing education is expected to increase with them.

Educational Background

Nursing is a vibrant and critical element of the healthcare experience, with more than 2.5 million registered nurses making up the backbone of the U.S. healthcare delivery system.

Woolley (2004) hypothesizes that nursing has always been able to respond to the needs of society by training and releasing scores of nurses to address the nation's healthcare needs at various points of crisis throughout history, most notably during World War I and II.³

The trade-off was that in order to mobilize nurses into the community quickly, the educational process needed to be shorter and more direct than a traditional university education. It was seen as a success when curriculum was developed to produce nurses in less than 3 years.³

In 1965, the American Nurses Association (ANA), sensing the need to capture nursing's stature and educational standards, formally endorsed that all nurses should be minimally trained at a baccalaureate degree level, and that the educational process should move from the hospital to the university setting.⁴

The desire to be accepted as an autonomous and powerful profession in its own right had been established as far back as the 1890s by a small group of nursing leaders who recognized that true empowerment and respect would come from nursing's success at finding one single unified voice.⁵

The ANA attempted to re-energize this idea in 1978, and again in 2008 with the "BSN in 10" legislation, currently under review in several states (Starr & Edwards, 2010).⁶

Forty-five years later, the nursing profession is still looking for consensus and solutions.

The two prevalent arguments for a baccalaureate entry-level education fall under the umbrellas of patient outcomes and professional status.

Although all three educational pathways will prepare potential candidates to take and pass the NCLEX-RN exam, evidence suggests that patient safety and outcomes are enhanced under the direction of a baccalaureate trained nurse.

Aiken, et al (2003) found that in hospitals staffed with a higher percentage of nurses with a bachelor's degree, mortality and complications related to surgery were significantly reduced.

In addition, they found that mean years of experience did not factor into the mortality or complication rates, despite anecdotal, passionate, but ultimately spurious arguments from associate or diploma trained nurses which attempted to equate exposure with education.⁷

The second argument - professional standing and status - is a more difficult position to reinforce quantitatively.

The data is not as objective and concrete with regard to patient outcomes, but this is where nursing can begin to make gains if nursing leaders are able and willing to incorporate lessons from other disciplines that faced similar journeys.

The pharmacy profession, in 1977, realized that the then-current two-degree system "might be detrimental to the profession" and "would promote fragmentation in the profession."¹

In 1997, after years of academic debate, the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education mandated that the PharmD should be the sole avenue of accreditation beginning in 2000.¹

The American Physical Therapy Association took a similar path, recognizing that the Doctorate of Physical Therapy degree would be the only appropriate education preparation able to respond to the growing complexity of knowledge necessary to provide care to patients.¹

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The Future Depends On It

For major educational streamlining and reform to take place, the nursing profession will have to form consensus and align its major professional advocacy groups. This has already begun to gain traction.

The Tri-Council for Nursing, which includes the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the American Nurses Association, the American Organization of Nurse Executives, and the National League for Nursing, issued a consensus statement on May 14, 2010. It "encourages all nurses, regardless of entry-point into the profession, to continue their education in programs that grant baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral degrees."⁸

Taylor (2008) states that there is currently minimal opportunity for the nursing profession to engage in clinical or healthcare policy development, because "under-educated members of the health team rarely sit at policy tables or are invited to participate as members of governing boards".⁴

As the largest healthcare profession by far, nursing has great potential to have major influence on the shape and nature of healthcare reform in this country. Until it can find a unified voice, however, nurses will be "left behind while other members of the healthcare team influence the advancement of their professions and the face of healthcare in this country."⁴

References for this article can accessed here.

Jay Rosenberg is Director of Nursing & Ancillary Services at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation, West Orange, NJ