Nursing as a Profession
Webster dictionary define a profession as a person that completed special education, training, or skills to perform a particular job adequately. I believe Nursing is a profession whether graduated from Associate degree, Bachelors degree or Diploma graduate. In front of the patient, all of them are nurses. According to Huston (2014) ADN, BSN, and diploma nurses takes the same National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) and have coexisted in the hospitals for more than 50 years. The NCLEX examination is a test to measure the minimum technical competency of a nurse to make sure that they can perform nursing effectively and safely. I consider ADN nurses as effective nurses that can provide an excellent patient care as their counterparts. I am an ADN graduate, and I took a gruesome training in a Junior college nursing program. We started as 60 students, and only 15 students from the original class graduated weeding out the weaker students in the class. Their concept was if you are not prepared in class, and there are aspiring students that want to be in your position since we have a long waiting list. I waited two years just to get into the program, and while I was there, I made sure that I wouldn’t mess it up. That made us work harder and placed patient safety at the highest level. According to Bolden (2002), Flexner’s report stated that entry level for a profession in United States should come from university. This might be difficult because most students from under deserve areas can not afford to go to university or private school. Requiring this, as a minimum entry level will exacerbate the nursing shortage we are about to face. Changes that Drives the Nurses to Return to School
There are studies that support graduates of BSN will perform better in the long run compared to associate degrees. Nurses holding BSN degrees decreased the risk of patient death and failure to rescue by 5%(AACN, 2011b). Five percent might not be a lot for the hospital, but it can save them millions of dollars if the patient family sues the hospital of wrongful death of their family member. Huston (2014) repeatedly stresses the importance of higher education and the way it can improve quality care of patient and safety. Well-known hospitals nowadays
