Answer:
Title: Importance of Nursing Education and my overall educational goals
Nurses play a vital role in the healthcare industry and lack of sufficient knowledge or poor education of nurses can lead to poor healthcare delivery process. Proper education and understanding best practice care delivery is the prime step of being a professional nurse. It keeps the nurses up-to-date and continuously seeks improvement to provide individuals with the best care. A continuous growth in the nursing education can improve the patients’ healthcare outcome. It also assists the nurses to become more confident about their skills. My educational level is Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN). The ADNs can work along with the registered nurses (RNs) in hospitals, nursing care facilities and in other places. However, I am currently pursuing Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) to upgrade my educational level in order to provide a better quality care to the patients (Pittman, Bass, Hargraves, Herrera & Thompson, 2015). Moreover, it is the next logical step of gaining more job opportunities. Many hospitals prefer nurses with BSNs over ADNs. It is a four-year educational program and registered nurses and ADNs can enrol their name in BSN programs to further their education in the nursing field (Mancuso, Udlis & Anbari, 2017). Those who obtain BSN are more likely to be hired for different nursing occupations especially for working in hospitals. Again, the salary difference between the BSNs and RNs is significant (Grossman, Kazer, Moriber & Calderwood, 2016). The nurses who hold BSN degree are likely to make more than the RNs who have associate degree. Since, there are more job prospects for the registered nurses holding BSN degree are offered more salary due to high demand in the market. The registered nurses with BSN get more jobs, and make more money as they are better trained in speciality areas.
According to IOM Future of nursing recommendations, “nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression”(Pittman, Bass, Hargraves, Herrera & Thompson, 2015). An improved education system is always necessary to ensure a safe care delivery process of the nurses. The current as well as future generation of nurses are responsible to provide patient-centred care across all settings and in recent years, interest in the nursing profession has grown. Different kinds of challenges limit the ability of ensuring a well-educated nurse workforce according to IOM report. The study also recommends that the education system should provide the nurses with the tools which are required to evaluate as well as improve the standards of patient care. In order to improve the healthcare status of people, nurses should move flawlessly through the education system to increase the level and they should reach the higher levels of education, including the graduate degrees. Later in future I want to pursue Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) to increase my education level. I want to attain this level of education due to various reasons. First and foremost reason is that it will expand my career opportunities. Some healthcare organizations or hospitals have begun to list “DNP” under preferred job qualifications (Murphy, Staffileno & Carlson, 2015). The benefit of earning a doctoral degree will create opportunity of greater compensation as it will help me to achieve a higher position in the nursing filed with a good amount of salary. Also, it will help me in keeping up with evidence based practices. A structured program will help me to take certain required courses that will increase my knowledge. Achieving this degree of education will influence health policy and elevate nursing profession (Kermansaravi, Navidian & Yaghoubinia, 2015). Moreover, this challenging course of action will transform my passion into expertise. I will be more experienced and skilful in this field which will profoundly help in improving the care delivery process. After the completion of my BSN which I am currently pursuing, I am planning to pursue full time DNP which will take three to four more years to complete.
Nursing is a unique profession and there are different educational pathways to get entry into the profession. According to the recommendations of IOM the future of nursing report, the number of nurses with doctorate degree should be doubled by the year 2020 and hence, if I do not hold a higher degree in this profession it will leave me backward from others in the market of competition (Hassmiller & Reinhard, 2015). Also, attaining a higher degree will secure my position as an expert nurse which will strengthen my role as a nurse while providing care to the patients. Therefore, I strongly believe that increasing my level of education will increase my standard as a nurse.
The American Nurses Association (ANA) centres for ethics and human rights was establish to help the nurses in ensuring ethical standards in the scope of practice. Nurses can learn about the standards while pursuing education and if the nurses are highly educated they are well informed about the rules and regulations of nursing. According to the ANA nursing standards, advancing the profession is necessary and it is possible through attaining higher level of education (Olson & Stokes, 2016). Also, the standards recommend utilising evidence based practice in their profession which a nurse can learn through higher education (Ballard et al., 2016). Increasing the level of education not only increases knowledge but also competency, attitude and scope of practice along with the nursing standards.
IOM published report in future of nursing and recommended lifelong learning for the nurses. Increasing the knowledge always require learning and practising. I also think that continuing nursing education is necessary to provide better quality care. However, continuing nursing education may not be easy for all the nurses due to various reasons but informing them about the benefit and reconstructing the infrastructure of nursing education and opening up many job opportunities is an effective way in this regard so that every nurse can afford to attain higher level of education.
References
Ballard, K., Haagenson, D., Christiansen, L., Damgaard, G., Halstead, J. A., Jason, R. R., … & Radtke, B. (2016). Scope of nursing practice decision-making framework. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 7(3), 19-21.
Grossman, S., Kazer, M. W., Moriber, N., & Calderwood, P. (2016). Revising a doctor of nursing practice program in response to student focus group feedback. Journal of Doctoral Nursing Practice, 9(1), 51-54.
Hassmiller, S. B., & Reinhard, S. C. (2015). A bold new vision for America’s health care system: The Future of Nursing report becomes a catalyst for change. Nursing outlook, 63(1), 41-47.
Kermansaravi, F., Navidian, A., & Yaghoubinia, F. (2015). Nursing students’ views of nursing education quality: a qualitative study. Global journal of health science, 7(2), 351.
Mancuso, J. M., Udlis, K. A., & Anbari, A. B. (2017). Comments surrounding the doctor of nursing practice (DNP): Stress, ambiguity, and strain. Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, 7(4), 76-86.
Murphy, M. P., Staffileno, B. A., & Carlson, E. (2015). Collaboration among DNP-and PhD-prepared nurses: Opportunity to drive positive change. Journal of Professional Nursing, 31(5), 388-394.
Olson, L. L., & Stokes, F. (2016). The ANA code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements: Resource for nursing regulation. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 7(2), 9-20.
Pittman, P., Bass, E., Hargraves, J., Herrera, C., & Thompson, P. (2015). The future of nursing: monitoring the progress of recommended change in hospitals, nurse-led clinics, and home health and hospice agencies. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 45(2), 93-99.
