Philosophy Educational Preparation

Introduction

Recent reports suggest that nursing education, their roles, and quality care must be revised and restructured to secure and provides well-educated health care facilities based on the current challenges with respect to today’s healthcare system. According the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), today’s Nursing workforce along with scientific data, educational outcomes, and also defined the capacity and preparedness of degree courses, as means of improving the level of nursing education in the United States. At present, need of the hour is to call more nurses with experienced baccalaureate degree and other specialized staff to work in hospital that can provide quality patient care. As it was suggested that more experienced nurses can provided better quality care (Creasia & Friberg, 2001). This paper explained the role, importance of associate degree and baccalaureate degree nurses.

Associate Degree Nursing practice

It is always being a relevant choice to enter in nursing profession. Associate nursing degree is of 2-3 year, and awarded by the community colleges or nursing schools. These enrolled students can practice along with NCLEX-RN for license as registered nurse. Continued degree courses and improved growth of community, outcomes suggest positive impact on registered nursing practice. Associate nursing was founded in 1951 by Dr. Mildred Montag, in order to cover the shortage of nurses all around the Globe, so degree duration was decreased to 2 years along with good education. Overall, this program was reported as successful due to the increased qualified NCLEX, along with high level of clinical nursing competence, and further employed as graduate nurses. This degree program represents and defined the future of nursing with good quality in short time duration. Reports suggest that the greatest number of nurses that graduate from associate-degree programs (~60%), followed by baccalaureate degree programs (~36%), and then the diploma programs (~4%). (Mahaffey, 2002)

Baccalaureate Degree Nursing

This is the Bachelor of Science in nursing (BSN), an academic degree including the science, principle and core nursing practice. The BSN is generally 4 to 5 years duration, that includes initial 2 years for general education and principles, and the rest 3 years include core nursing courses, which have a wide variety of nursing experience to enhance the professional roles. The graduates of this degree are qualified for NCLEX to become the registered nurses. This degree courses starts in 1946, with introduction of vocational training and college education, which increased the enrolment as nurses in the military took better benefit of it to earn their degree in nursing education, and evolved better nursing practice in future.

Competencies of the Associate Degree Nursing:

The Associate Degree Nurse (ADN) graduate is a 2-3 years program and expected that they could to practice within the framework as defined by the NLN Council of Associate Degree Nursing Competencies. As defined, the major core components of nursing practices were better professional communication, behaviors, teaching and learning nursing ethics, assessment, better clinical decision making, caring interventions, collaboration, and manage patient care. These defined components were related to competencies with respect to diversities in health care setting. In order to accomplish the components and outcomes, AND has to utilize critical thinking, accountability, and competence for nursing profession. As AND is the entry level practitioner in a different health care settings that exposed to clinical setting and bedside nursing. Reports suggest that no research was done, which affects the today’s healthcare practice, as the current trends are changing very fast. So, nurses are expected to provide evidenced based practice, holistic care that requires thorough research practice to meet the standards of health care systems.

Moreover, research studies suggest that AND practicing was not able to complete with other health care professionals based on the current level of education as per education standards. Even, reports focuses that most of the hospitals are very active while recruiting AND nurses, and status is downside. Besides, diploma and ADN was not able to deliver the best as society wants the bedside nursing practice in minimal cost. However, the mortality rate was quite high, when compared with professional nursing practicing.

Competencies of the Baccalaureate Degree Nursing

Research showed the importance of the baccalaureate education in nursing practice with respect to the patient outcomes; however reports suggest that nurses are still the least educated among all other health care professionals. But BSN provides almost all the patient care directly in health care settings and hospitals.

Due to its longer course duration (4 years), nurses are exposed better education along with in depth research on clinical practices such as holistic nursing and evidence based practice. BSN delivered more advanced nursing courses based on the better leadership skills, its management, administration, humanities and last but not the least the extensive patient care. Furthermore, they are specialized on different topics related to community health education, socio-cultural, economical, psychological and spiritual aspects of nursing.

Research reports suggest that BSN Nurses do better performance and deliver good practice as administrative nurses along with the bedside nursing practice. They can deliver and presents as better professionally, as compared with different inter-disciplinary healthcare professionals such as doctors, physiotherapist, pharmacists, nutritionist, etc. BSN deliver the best patient care at various levels. Besides, they are expertise and trained for evidenced based research practice, which results in improved quality of patient care. It was also reported that BSN graduates were working with more unique professional skills in their practice that play a vital role in safe patient care. This overall recognized better patient care both for public health and among other healthcare professionals. Overall, the better patient care provided by BSN is due to better education plan, and research based practice and in-depth knowledge of nursing education during the baccalaureate degree study (Kumm et al., 2014).

Patient care Situation based on decision making of educational preparation of Nursing:

(BSN versus ADN):

If you consider around the Globe in health care settings, you will get many examples of patient care situation that depends on decisions of nursing practice. The best example is the case of palliative-care (end of life care). In this case, most of the patients are unable to communicate better with their needs, that results in withdrawal and refuse the medication or food. In this situation, ADN would only document the patient refusal of medicine or food, without the required important assessment that might be due to some pathological issues. As, ADN nurses was only trained or educated for documenting the possibilities, medication dosing, feeding, checking vital signs and symptoms of patients. Thus, the limiting skills and expertise of ADN results in improper palliative care.

On the other hand, BSN nurse due to its better educational and clinical research based practice and clinical exposure, they can recognize this situation in better way with respect to cultural, psychological and spiritual significance for patient at their end of life. BSN will better understand the reasons of medication or food avoidable by communicating with patient and involving the families to help better understand the beliefs and spirituality of patient. The BSN nurse can interact and talk with patients to provide better health care emotionally, physically, and psychologically. This will increase the better relationship with health care professionals and improve the trust, finally leads to improved health care to patients. BSN provides the evidenced based practice, better decision making, that all made the hospital to provide better health care practice.

At last, several reports suggest that various hospitals have now forced and moved their health care professional such as nurses to hold and take the baccalaureate or graduate degree in nursing for better nursing experience and better patient health care outcomes. By taking this initiative, the future of nursing and patient health care must be prompted, and could be a better novel approach to improve the practice of nursing.

References

Mahaffey, E. (2002). “The Relevance of Associate Degree Nursing Education: Past, Present, Future”. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 7(2), 2.

Creasia J.L., & Friberg E.E. (2011). Historical Development of Professional Nursing in the

United States. Telford J.C., & Keeling A.W. Conceptual Foundation: The Bridge to Professional Nursing Practices. Grand Canyon University College of Nursing Philosophy.

Shin.k, Jung DY, Shin s, Kim MS (2006): The journal of nursing education. EwhaWoman’s University, College of Seoul, Korea, 45 (6): 233-237.

American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) (2014): Fact Sheet: Creating a More Highly Qualified Nursing Workforce as a resource. Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/NursingWorkforce.pdf

American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN]. (1995). A Model for Differentiated Nursing Practice. Washington, DC:AACN.

Miller, J. E. (2008). The Doctor of Nursing Practice: Recognizing a Need or Graying the Line Between Doctor and Nurse? The Medscape Journal of Medicine, 10(11), 253.

Kumm, S., Godfrey, N., Martin, D., Tucci, M., Muenks, M., Spaeth, T. (2014). Baccalaureate outcomes met by associate degree nursing programs. Nurse Educ. 39(5), 216-20.

Blegen, M.A., Vaughn, T.E., Goode, C.J. (2001). Nurse experience and education: effect on quality of care. J Nurs Adm. 31(1), 3-9.