In lieu of the growing number of people with chronic disease, increasing aging population and the need for care coordination, the country has been facing a necessity for a more competent and qualified workforce in the health care industry. Nurses constitute a substantial fraction of this workface- 3 million nationwide. With this number of nurses and their impact on sustaining the health needs and accomplishing the heath goals of the general population, appropriate measures have to be undertaken to further improve the profession in order to address the aforesaid public health issues. These measures include increasing the level of education of nurses to baccalaureate level; increasing the number of nurses with PhDs and engaging nurses in lifelong learning (Fineberg & Lavizzo-Mourey, 2013; Gopee, 2002).
The educational preparation of nurses plays a significant role in their entry into the nursing profession and in the performance of their functions. Research suggests that nurse executives in university teaching hospitals and in community hospitals prefer a nurse workforce with approximately 70% and 55% prepared at the baccalaureate level, respectively (Aiken, Clarke, Cheung, Sloane & Silber, 2003).
On the performance of job functions and nurses’ academic preparation, some studies have suggested that baccalaureate-prepared nurses are more likely to demonstrate professional behaviors important to patient safety such as problem solving, performance of complex functions, and effective communication (Aiken, Clarke, Cheung, Sloane & Silber, 2003).
Furthermore, in a study of Aiken et al. (2003), it was found out that there was a statistically-significant relationship between the proportion of nurses in a hospital with bachelor’s and master’s degrees and the risks of both of mortality and failure to rescue, both before and after controlling for other hospital and patient characteristics.
The study posited that each 10% increase in the proportion of nurses with higher degrees decreased the risk of mortality and of failure to rescue by a factor of 0.95, or by 5% after controlling for patient and hospital characteristics. Further, increasing the percentage of RNs in the workforce would be roughly equivalent to the effect of a reduction in mean workload of 2 patients, and that both the mortality and failure-to-rescue rates would be decidedly lower if both the workloads were lighter and the workforce were composed of higher percentages of BSN-prepared nurses. These findings suggest that the conventional wisdom that nurses’ experience is more important than their educational preparation may be incorrect (Aiken, Clarke, Cheung, Sloane & Silber, 2003).
In addition to improving nurses’ level of education, the development of leadership skills among nurses on both clinical and administrative levels is essential in improving the delivery of nursing service among the general population. Thus, there is an essential need for more nurses to provide leadership. From bedside to the boardroom, nurse leaders bring critical skills and capacities for coordinating care and managing the disparate services involved in serving individual patients and advancing community health (Fineberg & Lavizzo-Mourey, 2013).
As previously explicated, academic preparation should be given more weight than empirical expertise in determining nurses’ competency in the delivery of their functions- a part of which is strategic nursing management on areas such as nurse staffing, allocation of resources and the like. Thus, to better equip nurses with leadership skills, encouraging nurses to obtain PhDs is tantamount to decreasing surgical patient mortality rates by increasing the number of BSN-prepared nurses. Furthermore, increasing PhD-leveled nurses may potentially prepare them to contribute to nursing policy reforms in the national level thus giving the nurses sufficient political representation in the legislation of policies relevant to the profession
As a BSN student, I consider the IOM recommendations very relevant and significant to my current academic undertaking. Through the recommendations and pertinent researches attesting the significance of educational preparation and nurses’ competency in their entry into the job market, their performance of their job functions and subsequently improving patient health outcomes, I have gained confidence and motivation to further persevere in pursuing a BSN degree- as this will serve as a guarantee for a relatively promising future for me as a professional and as individual.
References
Aiken, L.H., Clarke, S.P., Cheung, R.B., Sloane, D.M., & Silber, J. H. (2003). Educational levels
of hospital Nurses and surgical patient mortality. Journal of American Medical Association, 290(12), 1617-1623.
Fineberg, H.V., & Lavizzo-Mourey, R. (2013). The future of nursing: A look back at the
landmark of IOM Report: A commentary on Institute of Medicine’s report [Peer commentary by H.V. Fineberg & R. Lavizzo-Mourey]. National Academy of Sciences, 1-2.
Gopee, N. (2002). Human and social capital as facilitators of lifelong learning in nursing.
Nurse Education Today, 22(8), 608-616.
