A Bachelor's Degree as a Requirement of Medical Practice

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Recommended: associate degree nurses versus baccalaureate

A Bachelor’s Degree as a Requirement of Medical Practice

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the high demand for baccalaureate degrees in nursing and to explain why that level of education is in demand in today’s health care system. Nursing is one of the few professions in which there are multiple points of entry in order to practice medicine. Furthermore, one of the biggest discrepancies is the fact that no matter the level of education a nurse may have, they are treated the same as other nurses with higher or lower degrees of education. This paper will highlight the discrepancies regarding education in the nursing profession and will attempt to evaluate why the baccalaureate degree in nursing (BSN) should be the most basic level of education needed to practice medicine.

The idea of multiple levels of entry has been traced back to World War II with the inclusion of the diploma and the associate degree in nursing (ADN). These programs were included into the field of nursing in order to compensate for the shortage of nurses in the field after the end of the war. (Taylor, 2008) While this may have been a useful inclusion for the time, these levels of education are no longer a good measurement and education for the present time. As Taylor points out: “Nurses prepared at the graduate level demonstrate a significant difference in competency compared to nurses with associate degrees” (Taylor, 2008, p.612) What this means for the ADN nurses is that they are not as well prepared as nurses with the BSN education.

One source of this problem is the actual education and the lack of continuing education in ADN prepared nurses. In their education, ADN programs do not require as much as BSN prepared nurses receive. In addition, ADN...

... middle of paper ...

... p.612) If this is to change, then the profession must become more adaptive to the needs of the patients and the institutions they work with. The first step toward this goal is to define a definite entry-level education for health care. At that point, the necessity of the BSN program as a starting point for good, competent nursing care will be recognized.

Works Cited

Altmann, T.K. (2011). Registered nurses returning to school for a bachelor’s degree in nursing: Issues emerging from a meta-analysis of the research. Contemporary Nurse: A Journal For The Australian Nursing Profession, 256-272.

McEwen, M., Pullis, B., White, M., & Krawtz, S. (2013). Eighty percent by 2020: The present and future of RN-to-BSN education. Journal of Nursing Education,

Taylor, D. (2008). Should the entry into nursing practice be the baccalaureate degree? AORN Journal.

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