Nursing Education In Nursing

Nursing education and degree requirements had undergone a long way since Florence Nightingale transformed the art of caring into a formal training program for nurses. Currently, there are three main directions towards achieving a graduate academic degree in nursing: The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), and a Doctor of Education (EdD). The Doctor of Philosophy represents the highest level of education in the nursing research and theory. It prepares scholars to become leaders in the profession, understand the evolving nature of the nursing discipline, and guide future research and education (AACN, 2010). The Ph.D. programs focus on the theory, research methodology, and statistics; they require an original research

To meet the shifting health care needs of vulnerable population, the Institute of Medicine is urging nurses to engage in life-long learning and attain competencies, which would equip them to meet the health care needs of the modern-day population (IOM, 2010). Reflecting on the pressing need to enhance public access to quality health care, AACN created a Task Force to evaluate the quality of advanced practice nursing education (Cronenwett, et al., 2010, p.

296). Consequently, nursing programs prepare professionals who are amenable to bridge the gap in supply vs. demand of healthcare system. The equally important factor of nursing care is a holistic approach, which blends the cure and care into every patient encounter. In the recent statement, AACN brings up the notion that DNP prepared NP had a higher earning potential than the master’s prepared NPs (AACN, 2015). I suspect that the burdens of pursuing DNP education would offset the benefits. Analyzing extra cost associated with direct (such as tuition, loan interest, books, and fees), and indirect (associated with my inability to maintain full-time employment at least for the part of the program) educational expenditure, I doubt that increase in the amount of $ 8, 576 in annual salary (as cited in AACN fact sheets, 2015), would be a sufficient