The Benefits of Higher Education in Nursing Practice

Answer

The Benefits of Higher Education in Nursing Practice

Nursing education is an essential requirement for the provision of safe and quality healthcare. The more qualified and informed a nurse is, the better the quality of care that the nurse can provide to the patients. The IOM report, "Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health," provided a range of recommendations that touched on nursing practice, workforce planning and most especially, the education of nurses. This paper focuses on nursing education and how progressive continuing of learning for higher qualifications impact service delivery in the nursing profession. Progressive learning and the consistent pursuit of better qualifications ultimately make the practice of nursing safer and of better quality.

I am a qualified Registered Nurse (RN) having undergone a 4 year bachelor’s degree programme (BSN). This degree certificate has many career prospects that I may choose to follow. There are several settings in which I may choose to venture in; hospitals, State schools, homes, the battlefield, long-term care facilities, retail health clinics and community health centres. A Legal Nurse Consultant option is also possible, helping to advise those who find themselves in the midst of medical lawsuits. I could also be a travel nurse, providing healthcare services to medical facilities with short term needs, or a critical care nurse with more training in the field of critical care. There are also opportunities as a trauma nurse, orthopaedic nurse or even a certified dialysis nurse who takes care of individuals with severe kidney problems. In all these possible job market options, I would always be aware, as Allen (2015) also agrees, that constant practice, more experience and continued training is what would make me a better nurse in the chosen field.

The IOM report recommended that there is a need for profound changes in nursing education, pointing out that this is necessary before and even after the nurses have received their licences. Higher education for the nursing force has to be restructured, first by making sure that there is an increased number in the teaching faculty, and then by actively promoting interprofessional training of nurses whereby nurses are trained together with those people they closely work with in hospitals and care centres. The report called for a seamless transition of nurses from one education level to another, even the graduate programs. Only this would make them partners in healthcare redesign efforts. I would like to have an MSN and a doctorate in nursing because I am passionate about being a nurse educator. This would work for the teaching passion I have, combining my nursing expertise with it to design, evaluate and implement nursing education at the college and university levels. Ultimately, I want to be a Health Policy Nurse, actively promoting policies that encourage preventive care as opposed to curative ones. As a nurse interested in healthcare policy which is an indirect care concentration, I would expect that acquiring an MSN and DNP would last me at least four years. I would take two years to get an MSN in nursing, and then I would transition to the DNP degree for a further two years on full-time basis.

Increasing my qualifications to an MSN and a DNP degree would greatly expand my chances and opportunities in the competitive nursing market. This would be possible because I would not only be qualified to work on the front lines, but also in imparting nursing skills to a new generation of nurses and also help in healthcare policy formulation. I have mentioned that my interest ultimately lies in becoming a Health Policy Nurse in future. This would enable me to help revise and formulate healthcare laws, policies and regulations that would help in streamlining healthcare delivery and improving patient safety and patient care outcomes. My goal is to promote more interprofessional learning following the nature of interdisciplinary approaches to patient based care. Only an increased level of education would make this possible. Besides, with an increased education level, my opportunities would be expanded as I would have gained insights on a variety of subjects that directly or indirectly influence healthcare.

Besides giving nurses the basic tools necessary for evaluation and improved standards of patient care, the higher education that nurses get ought to preserve what are considered the basic elements of nursing education; ethics, integrity and holistic, compassionate care approaches. According to Grace and Milliken (2016), this can be done by promoting continuous, lifelong learning that structures residency programs and values continuing competence. Higher learning must demonstrate new competencies in care management, research, quality improvement and technological advances. Above all, the higher the level of nursing education provided, the closer it should get with students from other disciplines. The ANA Scope and Standards of practise has to redefine the services that a nurse is deemed qualified to perform in relation to their qualifications. The nurses must only be allowed to do those tasks that match their qualification levels, and these tasks have to be in clear synch with the nature of nursing progression. This would help in mitigating cases where the nurses are deemed to have breached their Code of Ethics. More than purely mitigating, it would reduce the cases of breaching the Code because the clear path to professional progression would open doors for nurses to be allowed to provide more complicated services.

Continuing nursing education should be made mandatory to every qualified nurse because of the highly evolving nature of nursing care. This education does not only give nurses the capacity to deal with more complicated cases but also equips them with the knowledge to approach the changes that occur in nursing practise. Obtaining graduate degrees and higher will enable nurses to acquire up-to-date knowledge, contribute in making safer patient decisions and provide the necessary leadership in nursing science. It is true that experience matters a lot in the practice of nursing. However, experience alone is not enough. Talley, Talley, and Collins-McNeil (2016) assert that one has to back this experience with timely interventions and modern recommended practices that emerge as a result of research in nursing care and medicine. In order to rise above the outdated tendencies that stressed on curative methods towards patient centred methods of care that stress on palliative care, one has to continually progress in knowledge. This makes the need for continued nursing education even more essential.

As discussed above, nursing care is a highly evolving discipline. The education provided, the progression that is possible within the nursing professions and the healthcare policies adopted must reflect this changing dynamic. When a nurse continues with studies even after the necessary licence is provided, it gives them the necessary skills and expertise to handle patient care in a manner that would deliver the best results. The ultimate goal is to have safer patient care and reliable nursing professionals. This can only be achieved through constant progressive education