Not sure how that education will help patients .To be nurses you need 4 years of school so how would 5 or 6 years of school make a difference to get bachelor’s degree?
Would nurses take on more responsibility in hospital? What more responsibility could they take on?
Well we are at it why not make counselors ,psychiatrist ,doctors ,police ,fire ,EMS so on take on more education to keep up with times.
Will nurses and doctor have more responsibility in hospital in 5 years from now?
Ignorance fought for me, I guess. I know there are many different types of nurses and levels of nursing care, but I assumed nursing was already a 4 year Bachelors degree in the first place, at least in the U.S.
Omigod, I’m going to have to go back to school to get a bachelor’s degree!
That explains the occasional nightmares about being back in college, not knowing where my classes are with finals coming up and I haven’t studied. :eek:
As for greater educational requirements for nursing in Quebec, it seems other provinces made similar changes at least a decade ago without ensuing “chaos” and “panic”. From the linked article:
“Even under the current plan to start phasing in the new requirement in 2014, only 45 per cent of Quebec nurses will have a bachelor’s degree by 2019, compared with 70 per cent in Ontario”
Well, my mother in law has a BS in Library Science, a BA in English and an Associates in Nursing, a lifetime teaching cert from Missouri and still takes continuing ed classes for proficiency. She has been taking at least 2 classes a year since 1964.
Also, the degree ( ASN, BSN, MSN, DSN ) is not the license (CNA, LPN, RN, CNP/APRN).
States have specific requirements to stand for the examination for the license, which may include some combination of clinical and academic experience. Some of the nursing programs incorporate the clinical experience, allowing the graduates to immediately stand for the examination for the license.
Quebec’s education system has some major differences from the rest of North America. The school system only goes up to grade 11. Students wanting to continue their education have to enroll in the equivalent of junior college (CEGEP) for a 2-yr diploma (university prep) or a 3-yr vocational associate’s degree. A bachelor’s degree only takes 3 yrs, and CEGEP graduates can entire directly into professional programs like law or medicine.
I frankly don’t think nurses need a bachelor’s degree and with understaffing as much as a problem as it is, I don’t think this is going to do much good.
But in general I’m all for higher education and responsible professionals so I’m a bit torn on this issue. Nursing programs are already pretty rigorous as it is, so I don’t know what lazy, irresponsible slobs that requiring a 4-year degree is going to weed out that aren’t already weeded out in the licensing programs.
That article doesn’t really address what, to me, is the most obvious question: Why? What is the reason for the requirement? What problem does it solve? The only rationale mentioned is “the other provinces are doing it.”
Yeah. I can’t speak for Canada directly, but I assume their problems are similar to the US’s. We are running out of PCPs, and not making more. We currently have a procedure based payment system, the more things you do to a person that have a code, the more you make that day. Unfortunately listening to a person for the amount of a Primary care Doctor really should, isn’t a billable code. New doctors know that with the obscene cost of the degree these days, if they waste their time listening and comforting, and saying, “OK, I’m not too worried, just come back each week and let me know how things are changing” they will have difficulty making their bills.
So everybody wants to go into a specialty where everything is a procedure, and morning to night is spent on billable procedures. The projections are that as soon we will have every available PCP with no room for new patients(some localized areas have that already).
So the proposed solution is to move toward to PCMHs and Organized care solutions where the initial point of contact for any medical issue is a qualified nurse practitioner, who takes much of the PCP role of referring to doctor specialists is necessary.
Agree. I always considered nursing as a vocation or trade, a narrow field of specialty that you studied full time (but for only two years instead of four) to get a certification or licence. It seems ridiculous to require nurses to take all those silly liberal arts courses like business poetry or whatever, just to get the B.A.
In the US, at least, they don’t get a B.A., they get a B.S.N, a bachelor’s in science of nursing. Here is an example. It is much more focused on nursing, it just gives a bit more science background about why things are done and background explanations about what they will be doing. And also, again, this prepares them if they want to become nurse practitioners, as those need a master’s degree (in nursing).
I’ll let the comment about silly liberal arts courses slide for this discussion.
The State of Illinois tried to make a BS a requirement for an RN a bunch of years ago. However there is a nursing shortage. Making it more difficult to become an RN certainly won’t help relieve the shortage.